The study was carried out with the purpose of identifying the main parasitoids of Chrysomya megacephala in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, given the importance of these flies as vectors of pathogenic agents in the urban environment. Samplings were conducted every week from August 1999 to July 2000. The substrate used to grow fly pupae and to trap parasitoids was decomposing meat. It was ide...

This study determined the species of parasitoids associated with Chrysomya megacephala, collected on bovine kidney baits, in Itumbiara, State of Goias, Brazil. The pupae were obtained by flotation. They were individually placed in gelatin capsules until the emergence of the adult flies or their parasitoids. The overall prevalence of parasitism was 18.6%. Brachymeria podagrica, Nasonia vitripenn...

The epigenetic mark of DNA methylation, the addition of a methyl (CH3) group to a cytosine residue, has been extensively studied in many mammalian genomes and, although it is commonly found at the promoter regions of genes, it is also involved in a number of different biological functions. In other complex animals, such as social insects, DNA methylation has been determined to be involved in ca...

The parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis is an emerging genetic model for functional analysis of DNA methylation. Here, we characterize genome-wide methylation at a base-pair resolution, and compare these results to gene expression across five developmental stages and to methylation patterns reported in other insects. An accurate assessment of DNA methylation across the genome is accomplished us...

Correlation and regression analyses indicate that isofemale strains extracted from a population of the parasitic wasp, Nasonia vitripennis, differ in the fit of their second sex ratios (those produced in previously parasitized hosts) to the predictions of the theory of optimal facultative sex ratio adjustment. Under the theory's simple assumptions about population structure, there is significan...

The insect order of Hymenoptera (ants, bees, sawflies, and wasps) consists almost entirely of haplodiploid species. Under haplodiploidy, males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, whereas females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid. Although diploid males commonly occur, haploid females have never been reported. In analyzing the phenomenon of gynandromorphism in the parasito...