To fight human vector-borne diseases, first releases of sterile transgenic mosquitoes have been performed. Someday, disease-refractory mosquitoes will replace wild types to stop transmission. For such population replacements, gene drive mechanisms must be established that allow local confinement and reversibility.

While screening a large collection of wild and laboratory yeast strains for their ability to attract Drosophila melanogaster adults, we noticed a large difference in fly preference for two nearly isogenic strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, BY4741 and BY4742. Using standard genetic analyses, we tracked the preference difference to the lack of mitochondria in the BY4742 strain used in the initi...

Studies that explicitly and specifically take into account the spatial dimension within the study of eco-epidemiological systems remain rare. Our approach of modelling the spatial and/or temporal properties of the entomological and/or epidemiological data before their mapping with possible explanatory variables, objectively underline the significant patterns at different scales. The domiciliary...

Interactions between pathogens and their insect vectors in nature are under the control of both genetic and non-genetic factors, yet most studies on mosquito vector competence for human pathogens are conducted in laboratory systems that do not consider genetic and/or environmental variability. Evaluating the risk of emergence of arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) of public health importance ...

Ammonia is both a building block and a breakdown product of amino acids and is found widely in the environment. The odor of ammonia is attractive to many insects, including insect vectors of disease. The olfactory response of Drosophila to ammonia has been studied in some detail, but the taste response has received remarkably little attention. Here, we show that ammonia is a taste cue for Droso...

Insect-fungal complexes provide challenging and fascinating systems for the study of biotic interactions between plants. plant pathogens, insect vectors and other associated organisms. The types of interactions among these organisms (mutualism. antagonism. parasitism. phoresy. etc.) are as variable as the range of organisms involved (plants, fungi, insects. mites. etc.). We focus on bark beetle...

The genetic diversity of three temperate fruit tree phytoplasmas 'Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum', 'Ca. P. mali' and 'Ca. P. pyri' has been established by multilocus sequence analysis. Among the four genetic loci used, the genes imp and aceF distinguished 30 and 24 genotypes, respectively, and showed the highest variability. Percentage of substitution for imp ranged from 50 to 68 % according t...

We investigated the efficacy and the residual effect of fipronil(R) against two species of triatomine bugs, Triatoma infestans and Rhodnius neglectus, in laboratory conditions measuring concentration-response and residual activity on different surfaces (dried mud and lime coated mud). Lethal concentrations (LC50,90) were determined on filter paper. The higher insecticide efficacy against R. neg...

Some geminiviruses are transmitted by the whitefly Bemisia tabaci in a circulative manner. These geminiviruses are assigned to the genus Begomovirus within the family Geminiviridae. The route followed by begomoviruses in their insect vector and the velocity of translocation of the various viruses seem to be intrinsic to the whitefly, not to the virus. Subsequent to ingestion during feeding on a...

While the former part of this back-to-back paper dealt with the identification of multi-scale spatial patterns associated with the presence, abundance and dispersion of the insect vectors (Triatominae) of Chagas disease, this latter part examines the need for pattern characterisation by means of detailed data on environmental, residential, peri-domiciliary and human behaviour. The study site wa...