Understanding oviposition behavior is important to behavioral and vector ecologists because of its potential use in developing vector control strategies for insect-borne infectious diseases. Our study compared the oviposition behaviors of Anopheles gambiae s.s mosquitoes from two different regions of East Africa, Mbita Point, Kenya and Ifakara, Tanzania. The work sought behavioral evidence for ...

The times of oviposition are affected little by the use of a night lighting program. Egg shell weight is not changed by the time of oviposition. Egg weight, shell percentage and it's color vary according to the time of oviposition. The egg characteristics have not been affected by the use of night lighting. Night lighting reduces the percentage of eggs downgraded, in particular reducing by 37 %...

Oocyte counts, used as a measure of egg load, were compared among three different age groups (15, 30 and 45 days) of two polyphagous species of tephritid fruit flies, Anastrepha ludens and Anastrepha obliqua, which were exposed to varying conditions of diet (sucrose vs sucrose and protein), availability of oviposition substrate (present vs absent), adult female density (1, 2 and 4 females/cage)...

The selection of an appropriate oviposition site is crucial to the maternal fitness of eggraft producing mosquitoes. Females in this group of mosquitoes produce a single egg-raft during their lifetimes. All egg-raft producing mosquitoes are members of the subfamily Culicinae and include the medically important genera Culex and Culiseta. Egg-raft producing mosquitoes use several physical and che...

Insect parasitoids are known to deposit chemical signals on utilized hosts following oviposition. It is believed that these chemical signals alert future conspecifics of an exploited and thus sub-optimal host alleviating potential suffering among brood that would otherwise compete over a limited resource. Diachasma alloeum (Muesebeck) is a braconid wasp that specifically attacks two species of ...

Adult cabbage maggots (Delia radicum L.) were exposed to dry conidia of isolates of several hyphomycetous fungi by placing them in a centrifuge tube containing conidia, then releasing them into small screened plastic cages. Mortality was assessed after 48, 120 and 160 h. A Beauveria bassiana isolate (P89 from Musca domestica) caused the highest mortality after 48 h, resulting in 100% mortality ...

With the help of the international used tyre trade, the Asian tiger mosquito, Stegomyia albopicta, has been able to expand its range world-wide. In 1979, the species was recorded in Europe for the first time in Albania, and has since been reported in 14 European countries. In addition to its rapid spread, St. albopicta is of particular interest due to its vector capacity for certain infectious ...

In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Aggregation of embryos in clutches that lack internal circulation can increase the ris...

Reproduction is influenced by many external factors. For egg laying of pond snails, one important trigger is the transfer from dirty, oxygen-poor water to clean, oxygen-rich water. This response is due to the combined effects of elevated oxygen level, chemical water composition and clean substrate. Whether this clean-water stimulus (CWS) resembles the natural egg-laying process has remained unt...

Communal oviposition in the Afrotropical blackfly species complex Simulium damnosum Theobald (Diptera: Simuliidae) is mediated by a pheromone emitted by freshly laid eggs. Previously, two compounds (designated peaks A and B) emanating from fresh eggs were shown to be associated with attractiveness to gravid blackflies in bioassay. The present study investigated the role of these compounds by te...