Triatominae: does the shape change of non-viable eggs compromise species recognition?

Parasites & Vectors

Table 4 Variance of size and variance of shape for the egg contour and for the operculum

Species	Viability	Egg, variance		Operculum, variance
Species	Viability	Size	Shape	Size	Shape
P. c.	V	0.0015^a	0.00017^a,b	0.0010^a	0.0016^a
	NV	0.0022^b	0.00062^d	0.0008^c	0.0040^c
	P*	0.4360	0.00000	0.427	0.0000
	V + NV	0.0018^c	0.00035^f	0.0009^e	0.0026^e
P. h.	V	0.0008^a	0.00017^a	0.0012^a	0.0025^a
	NV	0.0019^b	0.00026^e	0.0023^d	0.0024^d
	P*	0.0010	0.02900	0.046	0.4160
	V + NV	0.0013^c	0.00021^e	0.0019^f	0.0025^f
T. c.	V	0.0008^a	0.00012^b	0.0004^b	0.0010^b
	NV	0.0019^b	0.00029^e	0.0007^c	0.0028^c,d
	P*	0.1480	0.00200	0.157	0.0000
	V + NV	0.0017^c	0.00019^e	0.0005^e	0.0022^g
R. e.	V	0.0011^a	0.00034^c	0.0004	0.0009
	NV	0.0014^b	0.00045^d	0.0008	0.0011
	P*	0.6120	0.03800	0.2370	0.1430
	V + NV	0.0012^c	0.00037^f

Abbreviations: P. c. Panstrongylus chinai, P. h. P. howardi, T. c. Triatoma carrioni, R. e. Rhodnius ecuadoriensis, V viable, NV non-viable
*P, statistical significance of the comparison between V eggs and NV eggs for either the variance of size or the variance of shape. Except for P, values are variances of either size or shape, for either the egg contour or the operculum. For the egg contour, size was the square root of the area within the egg boundary and shape was the normalized elliptic Fourier coefficients. For the operculum, size was the centroid size and shape was estimated by the tangent space orthogonal projections (see Methods). The variance of shape was computed as the trace of the variance-covariance matrix (see Methods). Different superscripts (a-f) between species indicate significant difference between species. These letters must be read within each column, not between columns. Variance of size is expressed in millimeters

ISSN: 1756-3305