Table 7 Quantification of the ingested esculin by Lutzomyia longipalpis adults exposed to esculin-supplemented diets. Flies were maintained on an esculin-supplemented sucrose diet for 6 to 7 days. Insects were immersed and homogenized in two different solvents, water or methanol. In the solvent test, flies were immersed for 8 days. Stability of fluorescence was evaluated by immersing esculin-fed insects in methanol and then homogenizing for fluorescence measurements after 1, 14 or 28 days. Basal fluorescence of the negative controls (sucrose-fed only) was subtracted from experimental sample values. Each sample used for extraction and measurement consisted of an individual sand fly. Results are shown in pmol/insect and are the mean and SEM of 3 biological replicates, with a total measurement of n = 22 (male) and n = 24 (female) in solvent tests and n = 29 (male) and n = 36 (female) in stability tests