الفهرس 
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Abstract
SUMMARY
A survey of house hold fleas in 14 selected houses of Imiay village , Qaluobiya Governorate, throughout the period from April 1992 to March 1993 was carried out on weakly basis. The relative density, species composition, sex ratio of fleas; the relation between microenvironment conditions and fleas density and the blood meal sources of fleas collected were investigated .
A- Flea density
Fleas were abundance and could be collected from all sampling houses throughout the whole year, however the population fluctuated within the different months of the same season.
One annual peak of abundance was observed in most sampling houses (11 out of 14), during April, this may be due to the favourable breeding conditions (temperature, R.H., and other physical and biotic factors). A sudden decrease in flea density was usually recorded during May and continoued throughout the hot months of June, July, August to reach a minimum in october, with the advent of November the flea population begain to increase. With the advent of winter fleas become inactive again to reach its minimum in January. An increase in abundance was observed in March and April.
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Summary
B-Sex ratio: oc
Inspit,April and January where equal number of male and female were collected, the sex ratio fluctuated at different months of the year. Males usually outnumber the females (the overall prevalence of male throughout the whole period of study was 52.1 %). The highest prevalence of males was observed during February (59.1 %) and November (55.6 %). This increase in male prevalence may be attributed to the begining of breeding season of fleas in which large number of males prevaled, toward the end of the breeding season (May) females predominated over males. This fluctuation in sex ratio may be due to a difference in duration and/or survival rates of both sexes at different conditions.
C-Species composition of fleas:-
a- The human flea; Pulex irritans was the predominant house hold flea in the study area . It represented 99.5 % of the total number of fleas collected during the period of investigation.
Adults of this species were collected from all houses throughout the whole year.
This species was also collected from cats, dogs, rats and rabbits during the present work.
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Surnrnary
b- Ctenocephalides felis fells
The cat flea Ct. fells fells was collected from houses as
well as on dogs and cats. It comprised 0.5 % of the total number of fleas collected inside houses using the light tray traps. The low incidence of this species inside of houses as compared to Pulex irritans (99.5 %) may be due to its low pereference to human host. This conclusion may be confermed by the results of blood meal identification in the present work which indicate that this species is more attracted to dogs. In the same time 63.9 % of fleas collected from dogs in this study belong to this species. c-Xenopsylla cheopis
This species was not collected by the light tray traps, only 3 fleas were collected from a rat trapgd inside one house in the study village. The low number collected make it difficult to draw a conclusion about the abundance of this species. d-Ctenocephalides felis strongylus.
Ct. f. strongylus was only collected from domestic dogs in Imiay village. about (30.3 %) of the fleas collected from dogs belong to this species. As far as we know from the avilable literature, this is the first record of this species on dogs in Egypt.
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e- Leptopsylla segnis
L. segnis was collected from rats and rabbits , its relative density on rats and rabbits were (86.6 % and 70 % respectively). As large as we know from the avilable literature, this is the first
time to record this species from rabbits in Egypt .
D- Relation between house characters and relative density of fleas:- 1- Floor nature
The relative density of fleas was measured using light tray traps in 14 houses; 6 of them with dusty floor, 5 with cement floor,
and the other three houses were tiled.
The highest density of fleas was found in houses with dusty floor , followed by houses with cement floor whereas comperatively very low number of fleas was found in houses with tiled floor.
2- Presence of nets:
Results of the present investigation showed that, houses with pets contained higher density of fleas than those without pets, these results may indicate the importance of pets as hosts or transmitters of house hold fleas. In the same time houses with permanent pets contained lower density of fleas than those with temporary pets. This may be due to continuous movement of temporary pets
Summary This may be due to continuous movement of temporary pets between outdoor and indoor of houses which may increase their potentiality in transmitting of fleas in houses . 3-Illumination
It seems that, sunlight greatly affect the density of house hold fleas.
The highest densities of fleas were recorded in semishaded (47.9 fleas/trap/night) and shaded houses (46.9 fleas/trap/night) whereas the lowest density was recorded in sunny houses (16.4 fleas/trap/night) . 4-Cleaning level
Cleaning level of the house may play an important role in the density of house hold fleas.
Our results indicate that houses with low cleaning level
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conrained higher density of fleas than those with cleaning level. 5-Floor hight
The density of fleas observed in first floor (32.6 fleas/trap/night) was higher than those of second floor (15.6 fleas/trap/night).
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uSummary 6- Number of inhabitants
Results of the present work indicated that crowded houses contained higher population of fleas (63.1 fleas/trap/night) than houses with low population (28.3 fleas/trap/night).
E- Blood meal sources of fleas
Results of blood meal sources obtained from 55 blood fed fleas using modified capillary precipitation test indicate that, from 53 collected Pulex irritans, 9 fleas contained human blood (16.9 %), 9 fleas contained dog blood (16.9 %) and 6 fleas contained cat blood (11.3 %), the remaining contained mixed blood meal: Viz : human dog 11:4-fleas (20.2 %), human/cat, 9 fleas ( 16,9 %), dog/cat (9 fleas), (15.1. %) and dog/rat (one fleas (1.9 %) also from 2 collected Ct.E.Is fas one of them contained human/cat blood and the other contained dog/cat blood.
The predominance of mixed blood meals of fleas may indicate that fleas are usually interrupted while feeding and are usually obligated to move to another host or even to the same host to complete its meal. This may through light on the dangerous role which may be played by fleas in transmitting disease agents from man to man, from animal to animal and/or from animal to man.