Predatory activity of the nematophagous fungus Duddingtonia flagrans on horse cyathostomin infective larvae

This work was performed to determine the predatory capacity in vitro of the nematophagous fungus Duddingtonia flagrans (isolate AC001) on cyathostomin infective larvae of horse (L3). The experimental assay was carried out on plates with 2% water-agar (2% WA). In the treated group, each plate contained 1.000 L3 and 1.000 conidia of the fungus. The control group without fungus only contained 1.000 L3 in the plates. Ten random fields (4 mm diameter) were examined per plate of treated and control groups, every 24 h for seven days under an optical microscope (10× and 40× objective lens) for non-predated L3 counts. After 7 days, the non-predated L3 were recovered from the Petri dishes using the Baermann method. The interaction there was a significant reduction (p < 0.01) of 93.64% in the cyathostomin L3 recovered. The results showed that the D. flagrans is a potential candidate to the biological control of horse cyathostomin L3.