Author
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Leopold, Roger |
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Submitted to: Annals of the Entomological Society of America
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 1/12/2000 Publication Date: 7/1/2000 Citation: Leopold, R.A. 2000. Short-term cold storage of house fly embryos (Diptera: Muscidae): Survival and quality of subsequent stages. Annals of the Entomological Society of America. 93(4):884-889. Interpretive Summary: A method for short-term cold storage of house fly embryos was developed. It was determined that embryos that had been collected from females 3 hours after oviposition were the most tolerant to chilling at 5 deg. C. Other ages of embryos were less tolerant and most could not survive 24 hours of chilling without causing decrease of hatching or damage to subsequent stages. The 3 hour-old embryos could be placed into cold storage up to 72 hours and little or no detrimental effect on hatching, adult eclosion, reproduction or vitality. Placing the embryos in oxygen-enhanced or -depleted environments had no beneficial effect. Chilling of 3 hour embryos for longer than 72 hours or embryos younger or older than 3 hours of age produced 3 types of chilling injury - immediate, accumulative and/or latent. It is expected that this information can be utilized in control programs where other species of flies are sexually sterilized and released for supression of wild populations. Technical Abstract: The survival of Musca domestica L. embryos was assessed after storage at 5 deg C. Chilling tolerance was influenced by the length of storage period and by the age of the embryo at the time of low temperature exposure. Embryos placed into cold storage at 3 h of age were able to survive 72 h with little reduction in larval emergence or adult eclosion and vitality. One-h-old embryos were the least chilling tolerant and could not survive one d at 5 deg C. Three patterns of chilling injury were expressed after prolonged storage periods. They are categorized as immediate, accumulative and latent. Expression of immediate and accumulative injury related to the age of the embryo at the time of chilling and the latent type of injury was expressed during the post embryonic stages of development. Exposure of the house fly embryos to hypoxic conditions did not increase chilling tolerance and a hyperoxic environment was detrimental to the use of cold storage as a strategy to increase insect shelf-life. |
