Fig 1.
Aedes aegypti mosquito adults marked with fluorescent powders.
A: M. anisopliae-exposed male marked with red fluorescent powder. B: Uninfected male marked with yellow powder. C: A female mosquito that was mated by both fungus-exposed male and uninfected one, showing spots of powder of both colors on the last abdominal segments (red and yellow arrows).
Fig 2.
Greenhouse to evaluate copulation activity of M. anisopliae-exposed and uninfected Ae. aegypti males with female mosquitoes.
A wood floor was added to the structure to facilitate detecting dead mosquitoes on it; the greenhouse was at the Centro de Biotecnología Genómica, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Reynosa, Mexico.
Fig 3.
Daily number of Ae. aegypti females mated by a M. anisopliae-exposed male and an uninfected one in laboratory.
Data is the least square means (LSMs) ± standard error (SE) number of Ae. aegypti female mosquitoes in each insemination class calculated with a glimmix model from 10 replicates. Different letters above bars denote significant differences (p < 0.05) accordingly to by pair-wise Student t tests ran by Tukey-Cramer multiple comparisons.
Fig 4.
Daily number of Ae. aegypti female mosquitoes mated by a fungus-exposed and an uninfected male in a greenhouse.
Data are the least square means (LSMs) ± standard error (SE) number of Ae. aegypti female mosquitoes in five “copulation status” (combination of insemination or not/M. anisopliae-infection). LSMs were calculated by a glimmix model from 10 replicates. Different letters above bars denote significant differences (p < 0.05) accordingly to pair-wise t tests conducted by Tukey-Cramer multiple comparisons.
Fig 5.
Comparison of the total time taken for one Ae. aegypti male to successively copulate with 5 females.
For treatment (n = 3 replicates), the male mosquitoes were exposed to M. anisopliae (5.96 x 107 conidia cm-2) for 24-h, and control males were exposed to untreated filter papers for 24-h.
Fig 6.
M.anisopliae conidia attached to front tarsal segments of a male of Ae. aegypti.
Intersection of gray line denotes the conidia layer pasted on the tarsi and white arrows show the polyhedronic shapes of conidia clusters which appeared pasted on tarsal segments.