Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T04:28:15.614Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Attraction of female Uranotaenia lowii (Diptera: Culicidae) to frog calls in Costa Rica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2012

Art Borkent  and
Peter Belton
Art Borkent*
Affiliation:
Research Associate, Royal British Columbia Museum, American Museum of Natural History, and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad
Peter Belton*
Affiliation:
Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6
*
1Corresponding author (e-mail: [email protected]).
3E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During a survey of frog-biting corethrellid midges in Costa Rica, we collected 79 female Uranotaenia lowii Theobald, mosquitoes known to bite frogs, from seven lowland localities using the recorded calls of a frog. The calls of male barking tree frogs, Hyla gratiosa LeConte, were repeated about once per second, lasted about 0.15 s, and had a fundamental frequency near 450 Hz. We suggest that this frequency is within the range of acoustic sensitivity of the female mosquito antennae. Males of several families of Nematocera use sound to detect flying females of their own species, but we believe ours is the first observation of female mosquitoes being attracted by the sound of a host.

Résumé

Durant des études des espèces de Corethrellidae, moucherons qui piquent les grenouilles au Costa Rica, nous avons attiré 79 femelles d'une espèce de moustique, Uranotaenia lowii Theobald, une espèce reconnue également pour piquer les grenouilles, de sept localités de terrain bas. Nous avons utilisé les chants enregistrés des mâles de Hyla gratiosa LeConte, la rainette aboyeuse, d'une durée de 0.15 s, repetés une fois par seconde et d'une fréquence fondamentale d'environ 450 Hz. Nous proposons que cette fréquence peut être detectée par les antennes des femelles. Plusieurs familles de Nematocera utilisent le son pour attirer les mâles envers les femelles volantes, mais nous croyons que nos observations sont une première qui démontre qu'une femelle moustique peut être attirée par les chants de son hôte.

Type
Articles
Information
The Canadian Entomologist , Volume 138 , Issue 1: Adaptations and Constraints: a Symposium in Honour of Richard Ring / Adaptations et contraintes : un symposium en l'honneur de Richard Ring , February 2006 , pp. 91 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Entomological Society of Canada 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Belkin, J.N., Heinemann, S.J., and Page, W.A. 1970. Mosquito studies (Diptera, Culicidae). XXI. The Culicidae of Jamaica. Contributions of the American Entomological Institute, 6(1).Google Scholar
Belton, P., and Costello, R.A. 1979. Flight sounds of the females of some mosquitoes of western Canada. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, 26: 105–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, A.N., McLintock, J., and Rempel, J.G. 1966. Western equine encephalitis virus in Saskatchewan garter snakes and leopard frogs. Science (Washington, D.C.), 154(752): 1029–1031.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clements, A.N. 1999. The biology of mosquitoes. Vol. 2. Sensory reception and behaviour. CABI Publishing, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 2003. Raven — interactive sound analysis program. Version 1.0 [computer program]. Bioacoustics Research Program, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Available from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/Raven/Raven.html [accessed September 2005].Google Scholar
Desser, S.S. 2001. The blood parasites of anurans from Costa Rica with reflections on the taxonomy of their trypanosomes. Journal of Parasitology, 87(1): 152–160.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Göpfert, M.C., Briegel, H., and Robert, D. 1999. Mosquito hearing: sound-induced antennal vibrations in male and female Aedes aegypti. The Journal of Experimental Biology, 202: 2727–2738.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKeever, S. 1977. Observations of Corethrella feeding on tree frogs (Hyla). Mosquito News, 37: 522–523.Google Scholar
McKeever, S., and French, F.E. 1991. Corethrella (Diptera: Corethrellidae) of eastern North America: laboratory life history and field responses to anuran calls. Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 84: 493–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKeever, S., and French, F.E. 2000. Corethrellidae (Diptera), vectors of present and perhaps some of the earliest Anuran trypanosomes [online]. Available from http://www.vet.uga.edu/ivcvm/2000/McKeever/McKeever.htm [accessed September 2004.]Google Scholar
McKeever, S., and Hartberg, W.K. 1980. An effective method for trapping adult female Corethrella (Diptera: Chaoboridae). Mosquito News, 40: 111–112.Google Scholar
Remington, C.L. 1945. The feeding habits of Uranotaenia lowii Theobald. Entomological News, 56: 32–37, 64–68.Google Scholar
Thongrungkiat, S. 1990. A trial for control of both sexes of Culex tritaeniorhynchus by sound trapping at the breeding site. Mosquito-Borne Diseases Bulletin, 7: 89–94.Google Scholar
Toma, T., Miyagi, I., Higa, Y., Okazawa, T., and Sasaki, H. 2005. Culicid and chaoborid flies (Diptera: Culicidae and Chaoboridae) attracted to a CDC miniature frog call trap at Iriomote Island, the Ryuku Archipelago, Japan. Medical Entomology and Zoology, 56: 65–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wishart, G., and Riordan, D.F. 1959. Flight responses to various sounds by Aedes aegypti (L.) (Diptera: Culicidae). The Canadian Entomologist, 91: 181–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, D.M., and Borkent, A. 1989. Phylogeny and classification of the Nematocera. In Manual of Nearctic Diptera. Vol. 3. Edited by McAlpine, J.F. and Wood, D.M.. Agriculture Canada Monograph No. 32: 1333–1370.Google Scholar