Fig 1.
Map of the location of the study site, Ochollo, in Ethiopia [20,21].
SNNPR: Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region.
Fig 2.
Host choice experiment set-up.
Female non-fed sand flies captured from caves were transferred to the middle cage, where they were left for 30 minutes to adapt. Then, the connecting tubes to the lateral cages, where a hyrax and human hand were exposed, were opened to allow sand flies to obtain their preferred blood meal during four hours. The hosts themselves and their places were changed for each iteration of the experiment.
Table 1.
Blood meal analysis of Phlebotomus pedifer in Ochollo between February and May 2018.
Scientific and common name of blood meal sources grouped into categories for further analysis, and the number and percentage of sand flies that fed on each host. Out of 180 sand flies, 129 were collected indoors, 18 outdoors and 33 inside caves.
Fig 3.
Blood meal sources of Phlebotomus pedifer captured in different habitats in Ochollo 2018.
Blood meal sources of sand flies captured (A) indoors (B) outdoors and (C) in caves. The category livestock includes bovines and goats and the category rodents consists of Acomys spp., Grammomys sp. and Arvicanthis sp. The ‘other’ host group includes all other vertebrates that sand flies fed on (Table 1).
Fig 4.
Indoor and outdoor human biting rhythms of Phlebotomus pedifer by human landing catches.
(A) Average probability (%) of sand fly biting indoors and outdoors. (B) Average probability of temporal sand fly biting (%) indoors (dark grey bars) and outdoors (light grey bars). Error bars represent the standard error of the response variable.
Fig 5.
Phlebotomus pedifer activity pattern based on CDC light trap captures.
The left, dark grey and the right, light grey bars are respectively the average number of female and male sand flies at a certain time interval. Error bars represent the standard error of the response variable.
Fig 6.
Host choice preference of Phlebotomus pedifer in an experimental set-up.
Average percentage of sand flies that fed on a human or hyrax host during the host choice experiment. Error bars represent the standard error of the response variable.