Influence of temperature preferences of two Paecilomyces fumosoroseus lineages on their co-infection pattern

In order to clarify the epidemiological potential of entomopathogenic fungi for insect pest control, the role of the temperature as one environmental constraint was investigated on the pattern of co-infection of Galleria mellonella by two distinct lineages of a hyphomycete, Paecilomyces fumosoroseus. The distribution of conidial populations collected on cadavers of hosts co-infected under 20 regimes, ranging from 13 to 35 degreesC, was examined. The apparent temperature tolerance of both fungal isolates was related to their in vitro colony growth and their in vivo sporulation ability. The conidial populations were characterized by molecular markers based on restriction fragment length polymorphisms of the internal transcribed spacers (ITS-RFLP) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) contrasting profiles in combination with the conidial size. This study allowed a different temperature profile was identified for each isolate. Under most temperature regimes, only one lineage prevailed upon the infected insect; whereas both lineages coexisted at 20-25 and 25-25 degreesC. When one haplotype dominated, the displacement of the other one depended on its temperature tolerance. These results suggest that more consideration should be given to population-genetics analyses for evaluating the adaptability of microbial control agents to targeted environments. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.