Fig. 5. Effects of RNAi-mediated silencing of AamOatp on Amblyomma americanum tick-feeding success: the blood meal size. Ticks injected with AamOatp-dsRNA, control ticks, uninjected ticks and those injected with GFP-dsRNA were allowed to feed to repletion on cattle. After feeding to repletion (representatives are shown in A), engorgement masses (EMs) of ticks were determined. Summarized in B are EMs of 532–940 mg (N=15, mean=730) for uninjected controls, 437–774 mg (N=10, mean=620) for GFP-dsRNA-injected controls and 283–647 mg (N=10, mean=484) for AamOatp-dsRNA-injected ticks. The mean EM of AamOatp-dsRNA-injected ticks was significantly lower than that of the uninjected (P<0.0001, two-tailed test) and GFP-dsRNA-injected (P=0.0073, two-tailed test) control ticks. The box plots in this figure were developed with Microsoft Excel using mean, median, minimum and maximum, the first and third quartile data points. The bars in the graph represent maximum and minimum data points, as indicated in the text.