LE3 .A278 2019

2019

Smith, Todd
Coombs, Melanie

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Biology

Biology

Mosquitoes, Culex territans, are preferentially attracted to green frogs, Rana clamitans, that are heavily infected with intraerythrocytic Hepatozoon parasites compared to lightly infected or uninfected frogs. Further work showed that bacteria cultured from the epidermis of heavily infected green frogs were significantly more attractive to C. territans than lightly infected or uninfected frogs. The objective of this study was to examine the culturable components of the epidermal microbiome of green frogs infected with Hepatozoon species to determine which species are involved in the attraction of C. territans to heavily parasitized frogs. Analysis of the DNA sequence data was used to identify the culturable components of the epidermal microbiome of eight green frogs, and revealed similarities in the species of bacteria isolated from frogs of the same infection level. The attractiveness to C. territans of each purified bacterial colony was tested against a control plate in a modified PVC pipe and showed that although many colonies were significantly repellant to the mosquitoes, two species were significantly attractive to mosquitoes. Finally, the attractiveness of culturable bacteria to mosquitoes was compared to their distribution among frogs of different infection levels. Although correlations were not observed between the attractiveness of bacterial species to C. territans and the intensity of Hepatozoon infection, the results of this study indicate that there are differences in the attractiveness to mosquitoes among species of bacteria found in the epidermal microbiome of green frogs, and lead to speculation that combinations of bacteria species, or attractiveness manifested by unculturable components of the microbiome, are driving the preference of mosquitoes to heavily infected frogs.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:3254