Effects of food, water depth, and temperature on diving activity of larval Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto: evidence for diving to forage.

Anopheles gambiae larvae have frequently been observed to dive, but the ecology of this behavior has not been extensively examined. We manipulated food level, water depth, and temperature for individually-reared larvae and observed diving activity. Larvae dived more often under low food, which suggests that they dive to forage.

On the evolution of omnivory in a community context.

Omnivory is extremely common in animals, yet theory predicts that when given a choice of resources specialization should be favored over being generalist. The evolution of a feeding phenotype involves complex interactions with many factors other than resource choice alone, including environmental heterogeneity, resource quality, availability, and interactions with other organisms. We applied an evolutionary simulation model to examine how ecological conditions shape evolution of feeding phenotypes (e.

An age-size reaction norm yields insight into environmental interactions affecting life-history traits: a factorial study of larval development in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto.

Environmental factors frequently act nonindependently to determine growth and development of insects. Because age and size at maturity strongly influence population dynamics, interaction effects among environmental variables complicate the task of predicting dynamics of insect populations under novel conditions. We reared larvae of the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto (s.