Thelohania solenopsae is an intracellular pathogen found in fire ants, Solenopsis invicta. This pathogen has been shown to be a promising biological control agent against these ants. Recently it has been shown that presence of workers, in addition of infected brood, necessitates the horizontal transmission of the disease. Such experiments strongly suggest that the secretions of larvae might be contaminated with Thelohania spores. To investigate this, we screened the following materials for Thelohania spores. In the adults, we screened the fecal materials. In the larvae, we screened salivary fluid, midgut, meconium, and the anal fluid . The adult secretions were stained via Calcaflour white while the larval samples were stained with Trichrome. We also investigated the possibility of environmental contamination of spores by screening the trash piles and the adult ant fecal materials. For those samples that had spores when observed via histological staining, we further PCR amplified to confirm the identity of the spores. The presence of spores in these adult and larval secretions may explain the finding by Oi et al., (2001) that workers are necessary to transmit the pathogen from infected larvae to the rest of the colony.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Formicidae Solenopsis invicta (Red Imported Fire Ant)
Species 2: Microsporida Thelohaniidae Thelohania solenopsae
Keywords: Staining, PCR
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