FIG 1 .

L. infantum parasite burden is inversely correlated with bacterial richness in infected sand fly midguts, measured in numbers of OTUs at the species (A) or phylum (B) level. (A) The total number of OTUs obtained by bacterial 16S rDNA sequencing of DNA derived from the gut of sand flies fed on different meals (bars, left y axis) was determined in triplicate pools of 20 sand fly midguts under each condition, in three separate biological replicate experiments. The parasite burden represents the mean of results of 3 separate experiments in which parasites in 10 infected flies from each condition were counted microscopically. Panel A (line graph, right y axis) shows the means ± standard errors (SE) of the results from 3 replicate experiments. *, 2-way ANOVA with Tukey posttest was performed between treatments over time. The arrow indicates the duration of detectable blood in sand flies fed on blood. (B) UniFrac diversity metric over time in each treatment group. Sucrose-fed flies were obtained for the day 0 to day 3 time points. Data for days 0 to 9 are from three independent experiments; data for day 12 are from two independent experiments. Each experiment included triplicate pools of 20 dissected sand fly midguts.