| Title: | "Stripes disrupt odour attractiveness to biting horseflies: battle between ammonia, CO(2), and colour pattern for dominance in the sensory systems of host-seeking tabanids" |
| Author(s): | Blaho M; Egri A; Szaz D; Kriska G; Akesson S; Horvath G; |
| Address: | "Environmental Optics Laboratory, Department of Biological Physics, Physical Institute, Eotvos University, Pazmany setany 1, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary" |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.physbeh.2013.06.013 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1873-507X (Electronic) 0031-9384 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "As with mosquitoes, female tabanid flies search for mammalian hosts by visual and olfactory cues, because they require a blood meal before being able to produce and lay eggs. Polarotactic tabanid flies find striped or spotted patterns with intensity and/or polarisation modulation visually less attractive than homogeneous white, brown or black targets. Thus, this reduced optical attractiveness to tabanids can be one of the functions of striped or spotty coat patterns in ungulates. Ungulates emit CO2 via their breath, while ammonia originates from their decaying urine. As host-seeking female tabanids are strongly attracted to CO2 and ammonia, the question arises whether the poor visual attractiveness of stripes and spots to tabanids is or is not overcome by olfactory attractiveness. To answer this question we performed two field experiments in which the attractiveness to tabanid flies of homogeneous white, black and black-and-white striped three-dimensional targets (spheres and cylinders) and horse models provided with CO2 and ammonia was studied. Since tabanids are positively polarotactic, i.e. attracted to strongly and linearly polarised light, we measured the reflection-polarisation patterns of the test surfaces and demonstrated that these patterns were practically the same as those of real horses and zebras. We show here that striped targets are significantly less attractive to host-seeking female tabanids than homogeneous white or black targets, even when they emit tabanid-luring CO2 and ammonia. Although CO2 and ammonia increased the number of attracted tabanids, these chemicals did not overcome the weak visual attractiveness of stripes to host-seeking female tabanids. This result demonstrates the visual protection of striped coat patterns against attacks from blood-sucking dipterans, such as horseflies, known to transmit lethal diseases to ungulates" |
| Keywords: | "Ammonia/*pharmacology Animals Carbon Dioxide/*pharmacology Color Perception/*drug effects Cues *Diptera Olfactory Perception/*drug effects Pattern Recognition, Visual/*drug effects Pheromones/pharmacology Ammonia Carbon dioxide Horsefly Olfactory cues Par;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineBlaho, Miklos Egri, Adam Szaz, Denes Kriska, Gyorgy Akesson, Susanne Horvath, Gabor eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2013/07/03 Physiol Behav. 2013 Jul 2; 119:168-74. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2013.06.013. Epub 2013 Jun 28" |
