Eleny Pereira^1,3 , Beatriz Teles² , Erica Martins¹ , Lilian Praca¹ , Aldaleia Santos¹ , Felipe Ramos¹ , Colin Berry⁴ , Rose Monnerat¹

1 EMBRAPA Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia, Caixa Postal 02372, CEP 70849-970 Brasília, DF
2 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, INPA, Coordenação de Pesquisas em Entomologia, Manaus, AM
3 Universidade de Brasília, Departamento de Biologia Animal, Caixa Postal 4508, CEP 70910-900 Brasília, DF
4 Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
Author    Correspondence author
Bt Research, 2013, Vol. 4, No. 2   doi: 10.5376/bt.2013.04.0002
Received: 24 Apr., 2013    Accepted: 03 May, 2013    Published: 19 Jul., 2013

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Monnerat et al., 2013, Comparative Toxicity of Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner Strains to Larvae of Simuliidae (Insecta: Diptera), Bt Research, Vol.4, No.2 8-13 (doi: 10.5376/bt.2013.04.0002)

Blackflies (Simulium spp.) are widely distributed and can cause serious economic losses causing annoyance to humans and other animals and damage to health, agriculture and the tourist industry. In addition, they are vectors of diseases eg. onchocerciasis. One alternative to control this insect is the use of biopesticides based on Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) serotype israelensis but other dipteran-active serotypes have not been tested against these insects. This study assessed the toxicity of standard Bt strains belonging to serotypes israelensis, medellin and jegathesan, known to kill dipteran insects, along a collection of Bt strains from Amazonia (a blackfly-endemic area) to find the most effective strains for Simulium control. Ninety-six strains were isolated from soil collected in the Amazon and two of these showed high toxicity against larvae of Simulium spp. The biochemical and molecular characterization of the two strains showed that both produce proteins with molecular weights of 130 kDa, 72 kDa and 30 kDa that are comparable with proteins Cry4A and Cry4B (130 kDa), Cry10 and Cry11 (72 kDa) and Cyt1 and Cyt2 (30 kDa) and corresponding genes cry4A, cry4B, cry10, cry11, cyt1 and cyt2, similar to Bt israelensis, used as standard. These strains also showed similar toxicity to Bt israelensis and higher toxicity than Bt medellin and jegathesan against blackflies.

Biological control; Bioinsecticide; Blackflies; Bacillus thuringiensis