Effect of female age on susceptibility to three fungal hyperparasites in the genus .

Three closely related nematophagous fungi in the genus were compared for their ability to parasitize females and eggs of at different developmental stages. DoUCR50, StM, and ARF were originally isolated from , and , respectively. Phylogenetic analysis and pairwise sequence analysis showed that DoUCR50 and StM are more closely related to each other than they are to ARF. DoUCR50 parasitism suppressed 100% of the J2 hatch from 3-week-old females and 75% of the hatch from 4-week-old females. Eggs within 5-week-old females were resistant to parasitism, and hatch of J2 was unaffected by exposure to DoUCR50. StM and ARF did not reduce the hatch of J2 from females of any age. Eggs removed from females and spread onto water agar cultures of the fungi were mostly resistant to parasitism. DoUCR50 parasitized only 16% of such eggs from 3-week-old females. Extracellular hydrolytic enzyme production by the three fungal strains grown on PDA or parasitized females was evaluated using API ZYM (bioMérieux) test strips. All three fungi produced extracellular hydrolytic enzymes when grown on PDA or females. Trypsin-like protease activity was uniquely detected in DoUCR50 grown on PDA and females, with the highest activity associated with the fungus grown on parasitized females.