Fig 1.
Methodology of microscale examination of infectiousness.
(A) Schematic representation of the experimental procedure: a, feeding of individual P. papatasi females on the infected pinna; b, marking the bite site; c, taking a MB from the marked site; d, determination of the number of amastigotes by fluorescence microscopy; e, individual maintenance of engorged females for 8 days; f, examination of the sand fly gut under a light microscope. (B) Harpera skin microbiopsy tool (microsampling image courtesy of Trajan Scientific and Medical, printed with permission of the company).
Table 1.
Quantification of Leishmania major in ear pinnae of Meriones shawi and BALB/c mice.
Fig 2.
Leishmania major loads in ear pinnae of Meriones shawi determined by qPCR (original data in
S1 Table). (A) Comparison of the number of parasites in asymptomatic ear pinnae, in pinnae with swelling and in pinnae with ulcerating skin lesions. (B) Parasite load in three zones of the ear pinnae with ulcerative skin lesions. (C) Parasite load in two zones of the ear pinnae with swelling. In the boxplots, the box is bordered by upper and lower quartiles (IQRs, interquartile ranges), the horizontal line denotes the median value, the whiskers denote 1.5 times the IQR, and the circles denote outliers. The images of the ear pinnae were adapted from [10].
Fig 3.
Leishmania major loads in the ear pinnae of BALB/c mice and skin manifestations of the disease (original data in
S1 Table). (A) Parasite load in three zones of pinnae with ulcerative skin lesions determined by qPCR. In the boxplots, the box is bordered by upper and lower quartiles (IQRs, interquartile ranges), the horizontal line denotes the median value, the whiskers denote 1.5 times the IQR, and the circles denote outliers. (B) Appearance of skin lesions in M. shawi at week 25 p.i. (a, b) and BALB/c mice (c, d) at week 10 p.i. The image (a) was adapted from [10].
Fig 4.
Infectiousness of M. shawi and BALB/c mice at the microscale.
(A and B) Relative representation of the numbers of amastigotes in MB taken from infected ear pinnae with ulcerative lesions of M. shawi (A) and BALB/c mice (B). Left, lesion center; middle, lesion margin/swelling; right, intact skin. (C and D) Representation of infected and noninfected females of P. papatasi fed different zones of pinna with ulcerative lesions of M. shawi (C) and BALB/c mice (D). (E) Numbers of amastigotes in MB taken from the pinna of infected M. shawi and BALB/c mice. In the boxplots, the box is bordered by upper and lower quartiles (IQRs, interquartile ranges), the horizontal line denotes the median value, the whiskers denote 1.5 times the IQR, and the circles denote outliers. (F) Representation of infected and noninfected females of P. papatasi fed at sites with different numbers of amastigotes (revealed by MB) on pinna with ulcerative lesions of M. shawi and BALB/c mice. The source data are available in S2 Table.
Table 2.
Trend in parasite load between weeks 15 and 25 p.i. in MBs collected from the same M. shawi ear pinnae.
Fig 5.
Infection rates of P. papatasi females fed different infective doses.
The concentrations correspond to 100 (C1), 10 (C2), 5 (C3) or 1 (C4) amastigotes per female. The numbers above the columns indicate the number of dissected females.