The effects of genetic manipulation, dieldrin treatment and irradiation on the mating competitiveness of male Anopheles arabiensis in field cages

Yamada et al. Malaria Journal 2014, 13:318 http://www.malariajournal.com/content/13/1/318 RESEARCH Open Access The effects of genetic manipulation, dieldrin treatment and irradiation on the mating competitiveness of male Anopheles arabiensis in field cages Hanano Yamada1,2*, Marc JB Vreysen1, Jeremie RL Gilles1, Givemore Munhenga3,4 and David D Damiens1 Abstract Background: To enable the release of only sterile male Anopheles arabiensis mosquitoes for the sterile insect technique, the genetic background of a wild-type strain was modified to create a genetic sexing strain ANO IPCL1 that was based on a dieldrin resistance mutation. Secondly, the eggs of ANO IPCL1 require treatment with dieldrin to allow complete elimination of female L1 larvae from the production line. Finally, male mosquito pupae need to be treated with an irradiation dose of 75 Gy for sterilization. The effects of these treatments on the competitiveness of male An. arabiensis were studied. Methods: The competitiveness of ANO IPCL1 males that were treated either with irradiation or both dieldrin and irradiation, was compared with that of the wild-type strain (An. arabiensis Dongola) at a 1:1 ratio in 5.36 m3 semi-field cages located in a climate-controlled greenhouse. In addition, three irradiated: untreated male ratios were tested in semi-field cages (1:1, 5:1 and 10:1) and their competition for virgin wild-type females was assessed. Results: The ANO IPCL1 males were equally competitive as the wild-type males in this semi-field setting. The ANO IPCL1 males irradiated at 75 Gy were approximately half as competitive as the unirradiated wild-type males. ANO IPCL1 males that had been treated with dieldrin as eggs, and irradiated with 75 Gy as pupae were slightly more competitive than males that were only irradiated. Ratios of 1:1, 5:1 and 10:1 irradiated ANO IPCL1 males: untreated wild-type males resulted in 31, 66 and 81% induced sterility in the female cage population, respectively. Conclusions: An irradiation dose of 75 Gy reduced the competitiveness of male ANO IPCL1 significantly and will need to be compensated by releasing higher numbers of sterile males in the field. However, the dieldrin treatment used to eliminate females appears to have an unexpected radioprotectant effect, however the mechanism is not understood. A sterile to wild-type ratio of 10:1 effectively reduced the population’s fertility under the experimental field cage conditions, but further studies in the field will be needed to confirm the efficiency of sterile ANO IPCL1 males when competing against wild males for wild females. Keywords: Sterile insect technique, Male quality, ANO IPCL1, Rdl, Fried index * Correspondence: 1 Insect Pest Control Laboratory, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria 2 Department of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2014 Yamada et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Yamada et al. Malaria Journal 2014, 13:318 http://www.malariajournal.com/content/13/1/318 Background The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an environmentally friendly, species-specific biological control tactic for the management of selected insect pests, that requires the mass production and sequential release of large numbers of sterile insects into a target population [1]. The male insects are exposed to ionizing radiation for sexual sterilization, and compete with wild males to mate with females in the field, thereby inducing sterility in the native female population, which will result in a decline in the target population in subsequent generations. The successful implementation of SIT against the malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis relies primarily on the sterile males’ competitiveness and mating success in the field. The competitiveness of colony reared, sterilized, and released male mosquitoes is linked to numerous biological parameters, such as longevity, flight performance, spatial occupation of the habitat, available sperm complement, and mating behaviour [2-5]. Each of these parameters could be influenced by the various steps of the production process of the sterile males, three of which in particular (in addition to the rearing process and laboratory colonization [6]) may induce a significant decline in overall quality of the An. arabiensis males. First, to eliminate potentially disease-transmitting female mosquitoes from field release material, a genetic sexing strain (GSS) for An. arabiensis (ANO IPCL1) based on a dieldrin-resistant mutation was previously developed [7]. The presence of the dieldrin resistance gene (Rdl) and/ or the complexity of the chromosomal translocation induced in this strain could lead to inherent biological differences between the ANO IPCL1 males and the wildtype males. Second, during the sexing procedure at the egg stage, embryos are exposed to dieldrin and the resistant males survive while the susceptible females die. The ability to eliminate females at this early developmental stage has advantages, such as reduced production costs, labour and space requirements [7], but may impact the biology or performance of the treated adults. Finally, the male pupae are subjected to a dose of 75 Gy of gamma or X-ray irradiation resulting in >98% sterility [8] before they emerge and are ready for release. The GSS ANO IPCL1 has been evaluated in terms of reliability of female elimination [7], rearing parameters [9], strain management [7], and radiation sensitivity [7,8]. GSSs based on dieldrin resistance have been produced in the past for An. arabiensis [10] and Anopheles gambiae [11], but these strains no longer exist. Life history traits such as developmental parameters of the immature stages, adult size (wing length), adult fecundity and longevity were similar between the ANO IPCL1 and the wild-type An. arabiensis Dongola strain with the exception of the high intrinsic sterility observed in the ANO IPCL1 [9]. Moreover, the ANO IPCL1 strain had a Page 2 of 10 similar sperm production pattern as the Dongola strain, suggesting that this specific gene-translocation did not modify this reproductive parameter [12]. However, it has been observed in other strains, that there may be an intrinsic loss of vigour related to the dieldrin resistance gene [13]. Females of homozygous-resistant An. gambiae and Anopheles stephensi strains were less responsive to oviposition stimuli, pr (...truncated)