Oviposition ecology of house flies, Musca domestica (Diptera: Muscidae): competition, chemical cues, and bacterial symbionts.
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: House fly larvae face several challenges during their development to adulthood.They must: (1) condition their nutritional resources while avoiding intraspecific competition;(2) avoid competitive fungi and/or inhibit fungal growth; and (3) obtain sufficient bacteria as food supplements.In my thesis, I show that house fly eggs are provisioned with bacterial symbionts that play a major role in addressing all of these challenges, and that these bacterial symbionts can be vertically transmitted by house flies from one generation to the next.Specifically, I have shown that: (1) gravid female house flies deposit, and respond to, a time-dependent bacterial cue, Klebsiella oxytoca, that Using pEGFP-transformed K. oxytoca, I demonstrated that K. oxytoca introduced onto the surface of house fly eggs is maintained on and in house flies throughout larval, pupal, and adult stages.
Source: Summit (Simon Fraser University)
Author: Kevin Lam
Language: English
Subfield: Insect Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W145220250