Cat fleas (Ctenocephalides felis) are known as the primary vector and reservoir of Rickettsia felis, the causative agent of flea-borne spotted fever; however, field surveys regularly report molecular detection of this infectious agent from other blood-feeding arthropods. The presence of R. felis in additional arthropods may be the result of chance consumption of an infectious bloodmeal, but iso...

The present study provides data to decide on the most appropriate method for sampling of ground-dwelling arthropods measured in a moist-deciduous forest in the Western Ghats in South India. The abundance of ground-dwelling arthropods was compared among large numbers of samples obtained using pitfall trapping, Berlese and Winkler extraction methods. Highest abundance and frequency of most of the...

Food preferences and exploitation are crucial to many aspects of avian ecology and are of increasing importance as we progress in our understanding of community ecology. We studied birds and their feeding specialization in the Central Range of Papua New Guinea, at eight study sites along a complete (200 to 3700 m a.s.l.) rainforest elevational gradient. The relative species richness and abundan...

Blood-feeding arthropods are vectors of infectious diseases such as dengue, Zika, Chagas disease, and malaria [1], and vector control is essential to limiting disease spread. Because these arthropods ingest very large amounts of blood, a protein-rich meal, huge amounts of amino acids are produced during digestion. Previous work on Rhodnius prolixus, a vector of Chagas disease, showed that, amon...

The processes of urbanization is accompanied by attraction to settlements, the synanthropization, of many systematic groups of animals including arthropods. Synanthropization of some vectors of diseases agents, means augmentation of their contacts to people and increase of epidemiological danger. The annotated ecological-faunistic list of the synanthropic species of arthropods dwelling in East ...

Assays for the toxin sodium monofluoroacetate (compound 1080) were undertaken on arthropods collected from toxic baits after a brushtail possum (Trichosorus vulpecula) control operation in Nothofagus forest in central North Island, New Zealand. The 1080 concentrations measured (mean 57 μg g, max 130 μg g) are considerably higher than those reported by other researchers who collected arthropods ...

Arthropods associated with sugarcane seven to eleven months old, and with the sedge Cyperus immensus (C.B.CL.) were collected at two monthly intervals over a fifteen month period. The search was carried out in each of four regions in the sugar industry. This work formed part of a project designed to study the predators of the sugarcane borer Eldana sacckarina Walker. Generally greater number of...

mal groups. They have far more species than any other phylum, yet the living species are merely the surviving branches of a much greater diversity of extinct forms. One group of crustacean arthropods, the barnacles, was studied extensively by Charles Darwin. But the origins and the evolution of arthropods in general, embedded in what is now known as the Cambrian explosion, were a source of cons...