*

Blood feeding by the sand fly Lutzomyia longipalpis is aided by the presence of a vasodilator in its salivary glands. This novel vasodilator has been isolated by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. Ten nanograms of the vasodilator are present in the extract of a pair of sand fly salivary glands. It has 500 times the vasodilatory activity of calcitonin gene-related peptide, pr...

Gravid females of 2 sand fly species, Phlebotomus papatasi and P. perniciosus, were exposed to carbon dioxide anesthesia for 5, 10 and 20 minutes. Recovery time, mortality at 0 min and 24 h, percentage of females laying eggs, time to oviposition, and egg productivity for each exposure time were registered. Survival, fecundity and oviposition time in the 2 species were not adversely affected by ...

Myiasis is a disease caused by fly larvae. The term "myiasis" is derived from the Greek word "myia" meaning fly. Aural myiasis is a rare clinical state and occurs frequently in children. In this article, six children with aural myiasis, caused by the fly larvae, are reported because of unusual presentation. All of the children with aural myiasis were associated with chronic otitis media. In the...

Bacteria are essential for stable fly (Stomoxys calcitrans (L.)) larval survival and development, but little is known about the innate microbial communities of stable flies, and it is not known if their varied dietary substrates influence their gut microbial communities. This investigation utilized 454 sequencing of 16S and 18S amplicons to characterize and compare the bacterial and eukaryotic ...

Background: In this study, the toxicity of the different xenobiotics was tested on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster model system.  Methods: Fly larvae were raised on food supplemented with xenobioticsat different concentrations (sodium nitroprusside (0.1-1.5 mM), S-nitrosoglutathione (0.5-4 mM), and potassium ferrocyanide (1 mM)). Emergence of flies, food intake by larvae, and pupation h...

The aim of the present review is to give relevant information on aspects of the biology and ecology, including the vectorial competence of Lutzomyia sand fly species suggested as vectors of American cutaneous leishmaniasis in Brazil. The disease, due to Leishmania (Viannia) braziliensis, has been registered in most municipalities in all the Brazilian states and its transmission is associated wi...

Leishmania spp. are polarized single-celled eukaryotic parasites, the perpetuation of which relies on two other organisms they "use" as hosts. One of the Leishmania host organisms is a blood-feeding female sand fly, the second host being a mammal that acts as a blood source for the female sand fly. Leishmania-hosting sand flies transmit the metacyclic promastigote developmental stage to the mam...

INTRODUCTION Ignatzschineria species were previously known as Schineria species and are well known inhabitants of the larvae of the parasitic fly Wohlfahrtia magnifica. CASE PRESENTATION We report a case of Ignatzschineria species bacteraemia in a Dutch patient with a wound infested with maggots. CONCLUSION In the past, these bacteria have been isolated from Wohlfahrtia magnifica, a fly not...