An improved knowledge of mosquito life history could strengthen malaria vector control efforts that primarily focus on killing mosquitoes indoors using insecticide treated nets and indoor residual spraying.
Natural sugar sources, usually floral nectars of plants, are a primary energy resource for adult mosquitoes but their role in regulating the dynamics of mosquito populations is unclear. To determine how the sugar availability impacts Anopheles sergentii populations, mark-release-recapture studies were conducted in two oases in Israel with either absence or presence of the local primary sugar source, flowering Acacia raddiana trees.
Compared with population estimates from the sugar-rich oasis, An. sergentii in the sugar-poor oasis showed smaller population size (37,494 vs. 85,595), lower survival rates (0.72 vs. 0.93), and prolonged gonotrophic cycles (3.33 vs. 2.36 days). The estimated number of females older than the extrinsic incubation period of malaria (10 days) in the sugar rich site was 4 times greater than in the sugar poor site.
Sugar feeding detected in mosquito guts in the sugar-rich site was significantly higher (73%) than in the sugar-poor site (48%). In contrast, plant tissue feeding (poor quality sugar source) in the sugar-rich habitat was much less (0.3%) than in the sugar-poor site (30%). More important, the estimated vectorial capacity, a standard measure of malaria transmission potential, was more than 250-fold higher in the sugar-rich oasis than that in the sugar-poor site.
Our results convincingly show that the availability of sugar sources in the local environment is a major determinant regulating the dynamics of mosquito populations and their vector potential, suggesting that control interventions targeting sugar-feeding mosquitoes pose a promising tactic for combating transmission of malaria parasites and other pathogens.
Authors: Weidong Gu1*, Günter Müller2, Yosef Schlein2, Robert J. Novak1, John C. Beier3
1 Division of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, 2 Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, IMRIC, Kuvin Centre for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, 3 Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Miller School of Medicine, Center for Global Health Sciences, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, United States of America
Citation: Gu W, Müller G, Schlein Y, Novak RJ, Beier JC (2011) Natural Plant Sugar Sources of Anopheles Mosquitoes Strongly Impact Malaria Transmission Potential. PLoS ONE 6(1): e15996. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015996
Editor: Anne Charlotte Gruner, Singapore Immunology Network, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore
Copyright: © 2011 Gu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This project was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (grant 47302). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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