Abstract

An inventory of a year was achieved using two traps techniques (light and sticky trap) in Oulad Aid (center of Morocco), a focus of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL), to understand better the phototropism of circulating species of the sandflies dominance according to their physiological states (total number of sandflies collected are to be given). The most abundant species were respectively Phlebotomus papatasi (50.52%), Phlebotomus sergenti (24.7%), Phlebotomus pernicuosis (9.69%), Phlebotomus longicuspis (5.54%), Sergentomyia falax (5.22%), Sergentomyia minuta (3.64%), Sergentomyia antenata (0.4%) and Sergentomyia dreyfussi (0.2 %). With sticky traps, P. papatasi constituted 59% of collected samples against 23% for P. sergenti, 12% for P. pernicuosis and 6% for P. longicuspis. However with light traps, phototropism of P. sergenti was high and represented 56% of collected samples against 36% for P. papatasi and only 4% for P. pernicuosis and P. longicuspis. The trap technique influenced the dominance of females collected according to their physiological state. Non engorged females were dominant (77.73%) when sticky traps were used but gorged and gravid females were, respectively dominant (32.62 and 21.98%) when light traps were used. Statistical analysis showed that significantly more number of sand flies were obtained using sticky traps, compared with that of light traps. Sticky traps were found to be effective, as the sand flies entering the dwellings either for blood meal or mating got trapped, while light traps yielded relatively lesser number of sand flies species. Perhaps the sand flies which are influenced by the light were attracted towards the light traps. This information may be necessary for designing intervention measure and evaluation of the impact on sand fly prevalence in a CL focus area.

Key words: Sand flies, Psychodidae, phototropism, leishmania, Morocco.