Red Flour Beetle Pilot

From 9-11-14.

Checked survival of the RFB under stereo microscopy after three days of incubating at 30C. The RFB that were still moving were considered alive and those that were not moving were considered dead. The RFB are quite lively and the only difficulty in determine alive/dead status is actually finding it in the small amount of flour in the 96 well plate.

Below is a table describing the survival of the RFB under the 5 different treatments:

	Control	P. larvae 10^-1	P. larvae 10^-4	B. thur 10^-1	B. thur 10^-4
Amount alive (n= 8)	7	6	6	3	5

Below is a figure describing the information in the table above:

From this data it would appear that P. larvae has little to no effect on the RFB, however the B. thur looks like it has a lethal effect. However, the P. larvae spore stock was in a relatively low concentration to begin with (~10^6 CFU) whereas the B. thur was very high (>10^8 CFU). So, the RFB were exposed to a higher level of B. thur than they were P. larvae. Perhaps if they were given a higher concentration of P. larvae we could see a lethal effect over this time period.

The goal of this study was to determine if the bacteria had an effect on the RFB, and it was successful so far. It appears that both P. larvae (albeit slightly) and B. thur have an effect on RFB survival. The 96 well plate will be continued to incubate at 30C and the survival will be continued to be monitored.

//EWW