Heterogeneous feeding patterns of the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti, on individual human hosts in rural Thailand.

Background: Mosquito biting frequency and how bites are distributed among different people can have significant epidemiologic effects. An improved understanding of mosquito vector-human interactions would refine knowledge of the entomological processes supporting pathogen transmission and could reveal targets for minimizing risk and breaking pathogen transmission cycles.

Methodology And Principal Findings: We used human DNA blood meal profiling of the dengue virus (DENV) vector, Aedes aegypti, to quantify its contact with human hosts and to infer epidemiologic implications of its blood feeding behavior.

Nutritional stress affects mosquito survival and vector competence for West Nile virus.

Most anautogenous female mosquitoes ingest plant carbohydrates for flight energy and survival, and they imbibe vertebrate blood for egg development. We evaluated the effect of different sucrose meals following a blood meal containing West Nile virus (WNV) on Culex pipiens pipiens survival, nutritional status, and susceptibility to viral infection and transmission. Ten days after blood feeding, no mosquitoes survived on distilled water, 55% survived on 2% sucrose, 61% on 10 and 20% sucrose meals, and over 70% survived on 40% sucrose.

DNA profiling of human blood in anophelines from lowland and highland sites in western Kenya.

We used polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based DNA profiling to determine the person from whom Anopheles funestus and An. gambiae collected in natural human habitations obtained their blood meals. Less than 20% of human hosts contributed to > 50% of all blood meals, and 42% were not bitten at all, including people in the age group bitten most often.