Fieldwork and sandfly collection
Fieldwork took place across 39 forest sites across a deforestation
gradient (Fig. 2) and was conducted primarily during the wet-to-dry
transition and dry seasons (April to August) of 2015 and 2016. At each
site, we established three parallel transects 50 m apart, each with nine
UV LED CDC light traps (BioQuip; Catalog Number: 2770) set 30 m apart
amounting to 27 traps per site to capture sandflies. Trapping grids were
selected to be at least 3 km apart. We ran all traps for four days and
three nights. We collected insects after each 24-hour period and
replaced each collection pot with a sterile collection pot. The
collection pots from the previous 24 hours were immediately placed into
a portable refrigerator in which cold temperatures immobilized the
insects. At the end of each day, insect collections were transferred to
a -20°C freezer at UFMT lab facilities. At the completion of work at
each individual site, sandflies were separated from other insects and
stored into 2 ml Eppendorf tubes and labeled by site and date. These
collections were placed in a -80°C freezer until they were shipped using
dry ice to our home laboratory at Oregon State University where they
were once again frozen at -80°C until molecular processing.