Cannibalism as a Possible Entry Route for Opportunistic Pathogenic Bacteria to Insect Hosts, Exemplified by , a Pathogen of the Giant Mealworm .

Opportunistic bacteria are often ubiquitous and do not trigger disease in insects unless the conditions are specifically favorable for bacterial development in a suitable host. In this paper, we isolated and identified a bacterium, , from the larvae of the giant mealworm and we studied the possible entry routes by challenging larvae with per os injection and subdermal injection. We also evaluated the effect of exposing groups of larvae to inoculated in their feed and the effect of exposing wounded larvae to .

Kinetics of infective juvenile production of the entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema carpocapsae in submerged monoxenic culture.

The effects of culture medium formulations on the kinetics of infective juvenile (IJ) production of the entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema carpocapsae in submerged monoxenic culture, were studied at the cylindrical-bottle scale using six culture media containing agave juice from Agave spp. among other ingredients. The IJ production kinetics was well modelled through a re-parameterised 3-parameter Gompertz model with kinetic parameters: IJ-lag phase lambda (IJ) (day), maximum IJ-stage production rate m (max )(day(-1)), and IJ-multiplication factor (C (IJ)/C (IJ,0))(max)(-).