Miss Ella Yeatman1

1The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Biography:

Miss Ella Yeatman is a first-year PhD student at Melbourne University. After completing her Masters, she wanted to continue her research in her chosen field of entomology and endosymbiont relationships, and how these can be affected by environmental factors. She currently works with Aedes aegypti that are infected with Wolbachia to identify what environmental factors effect current field releases in hopes of finding the key to making this endosymbiont a robust and successful way to stop arboviral diseases spread by Ae. aegypti.

Abstract:

Aedes aegypti is the primary vector of some of the most globally devastating arboviruses including dengue. Due to the increase in human population and climate change it is more important than ever to find methods to control the spread of arboviruses. Wolbachia are endosymbiotic bacteria found in 60% of all arthropods. Aedes aegypti infected with Wolbachia are now being released as an arbovirus suppression method due to the bacterium's viral blocking and population-invading capabilities. Wolbachia’s potential to invade wild populations of Ae. aegypti relies heavily on their environment. Mosquito larvae in the field are confined to bodies of water which can experience a wide range of conditions. In this study, we measured the impact of different levels of salinity and water hardness during larval development on Ae. aegypti’s fitness and their Wolbachia infections. We found that increasing levels of salinity had negative effects on Ae. aegypti development and body size but mosquitoes could tolerate a wide range of water hardness conditions. We found no clear impacts of Wolbachia strains on salinity or water hardness tolerance and no treatments had any effect on the levels of Wolbachia within adult mosquitoes emerging from treated larvae. Our results suggest that these two environmental factors are unlikely to impact the success of Wolbachia release programs for arbovirus control.