High Speed Video Documentation of the Mosquito Sabethes albiprivus Egg-Catapulting Oviposition Behavior (Diptera: Culici
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ECOLOGY, BEHAVIOR AND BIONOMICS
High Speed Video Documentation of the Mosquito Sabethes albiprivus Egg-Catapulting Oviposition Behavior (Diptera: Culicidae) G VIEIRA1, MIL BERSOT2, GR PEREIRA2, FVS DE ABREU2,3, AC NASCIMENTO-PEREIRA2, MSAS NEVES2, MG ROSA-FREITAS2, MA MOTTA2, R LOURENÇO-DE-OLIVEIRA2 1
Serviço de Produção de Imagem, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil Lab de Mosquitos Transmissores de Hematozoários, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil 3 Instituto Federal do Norte de Minas Gerais, Salinas, MG, Brasil 2
Keywords Sabethes mosquitoes, oviposition, treehole, sylvatic mosquitoes, egg-laying behavior Correspondence Ricardo Lourenço-de-Oliveira, Lab de Mosquitos Transmissores de Hematozoários, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil; lourenco@ ioc.fiocruz.br Genilton Vieira and Maria Ignez Lima Bersot contributed equally to this work. Received 23 December 2019 and accepted 28 April 2020 * Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil 2020
Abstract The oviposition behavior of mosquitoes varies between species. We documented the unusual mechanism of egg laying in the mosquito Sabethes albiprivus Theobald with the aid of high speed video recordings in the laboratory. A sapucaia (Lecythis pisonis Camb.) nut oviposition trap, described herein, was used to simulate a tree hole with a small opening, which is the natural larval habitat of Sa. albiprivus. We showed that females approach the opening and perform a sequence of rapid, short upand-down flights before egg laying. At this time, the egg is already visible externally, being held at the very tip of the abdomen. Females catapult one egg at a time by rapidly curling their abdomen downward, sending the egg through the opening while their legs are positioned in different configurations throughout the event. The estimated velocity of the catapulted eggs was almost 1 m/s.
Introduction There are more than 3500 mosquito species (Diptera: Culicidae) described (WRBU 2019). Mosquito egg-laying strategies and behavior are variable (Consoli & Lourençode-Oliveira 1994). Females are usually inseminated soon after emergence from pupae or even during emergence (genus Deinocerites) (Clements 1999). Thereafter, in the great majority of species females repeat the gonotrophic cycle of blood feeding and egg laying for the rest of their lives (Consoli & Lourenço-de-Oliveira 1994, Clements 1999). Gravid mosquitoes use a variety of water collections in which to lay their eggs, which can be species-specific. At each oviposition, a gravid female mosquito may lay a single egg, a series of single eggs over a few minutes, or produce a batch of numerous eggs that are glued together. Interestingly, those species that drop a single or lay isolated single eggs often disperse their eggs (skip oviposition), distributing their
potential progeny over a wide area between each oviposition (Bentley & Day 1989, Consoli & Lourenço-de-Oliveira 1994). This is the egg-laying strategy of sylvatic arbovir
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