Figure 3.

Fungal virulence. Conidial virulence was assayed for the wild-type (WT), ΔBbsay1, and ΔBbsay1::Bbsay1 strains. The conidial suspension was flooded onto the host cuticle, and then, the inoculated insects were cultured at 25 °C. The survival trend was recorded daily (A), and the accumulative mortality was used to calculate the median lethal time (LT₅₀) with a Probit analysis (C). In the feeding test, oleic acid (OA) was included in the conidial suspension, and accumulative mortality was used to calculate the survival trend (B) and LT₅₀ (D). A Tween-80 solution was used as blank control. The asterisk on the column indicates the significant difference in the LT₅₀ value between the ΔBbsay1 and the wild-type or complemented strains (Tukey’s HSD: p < 0.05). Error bars: standard deviation.