Chlorine Dioxide - Wax Worm Lethality

From 3-24-15.

It has been 24 hours since the late instar wax worms were exposed to the chlorine dioxide gas. I did not want to count survival quite yet as I wont be able to tell if the gas did in fact kill the worms or they are just anesthetized. So, I opened each of the containers (removing their lids) and removed the PCR tube containing the ClO2 gas reagents. I also left the open containers in the laminar flow hood for 10 minutes to allow any lingering gas to leave the container. The amount of wax worms that had formed cocoons after just 24 hours of exposure was recorded and listed below. This was interesting because not all the wax worms had done this in every treatment group.

Results:

Conc of ClO2	# of cocoons
10 mg	12
100 mg	12
200 mg	0

Number of WW (n=15) that have formed cocoons after being exposed to ClO2 at different concentrations after 24 hours

The containers were closed once again and stored at room temperature for another 24 hours to allow any of the wax worms that may not be dead to become less lethargic and wake up.

Discussion:

Interestingly, the majority of wax worms exposed to the two lower concentrations of ClO2 reagents seemed to have formed cocoons while the wax worms in the highest concentration. This could be because all the wax worms exposed to the higher concentration are dead and were not able to form cocoons due to time of death. This was very much a preliminary study still, but if I decide to follow up on it I will need to add replicates and more importantly a negative control. I will determine the survival of the WW that were exposed to the ClO2 gas for 24 hours tomorrow.

//EWW