The impact of uniform and mixed species blood meals on the fitness of the mosquito vector <i>Anopheles gambiae</i> s.s: does a specialist pay for diversifying its host species diet?

Lyimo, Issa N.; Keegan, Shaun P; Ranford-Cartwright, Lisa; Ferguson, Heather M.

doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02442.x

Cited by 36 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Understanding the nature of selection that may have been generated by this widespread predecessor to ITN/LLINs can provide a useful framework for anticipating the future evolutionary changes these interventions may exert on mosquito behaviour. We hypothesize that the addition of insecticides to nets would substantially increase the fitness costs of anthrophily, and generate stronger selection for a shift away from human feeding; especially as results obtained here and our previous work [15] suggest that these vectors can reproduce and survive equally well on at least some of the commonly available alternative animal hosts.…”

Section: An Arabiensis-single Host Feedingmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Bednet use does not directly influence human abundance, but will reduce the efficiency with which mosquitoes can extract blood on encounter. As vertebrate blood is vital for malaria vector reproduction and survival [6,14,15], interventions that interfere with the efficiency of blood extraction from a host could impair mosquito fitness and generate selection on host species use.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of host species and vector control measures on the fitness of African malaria vectors

et al. 2013

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Many malaria vector mosquitoes in Africa have an extreme preference for feeding on humans. This specialization allows them to sustain much higher levels of transmission than elsewhere, but there is little understanding of the evolutionary forces that drive this behaviour. In Tanzania, we used a semi-field system to test whether the well-documented preferences of the vectors, Anopheles arabiensis and Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto (s.s.) for cattle and humans, respectively, are predicted by the fitness they obtain from host-seeking on these species relative to other available hosts. Mosquito fitness was contrasted, when humans were fully exposed and when they were protected by a typical bednet. The fitness of both vectors varied between host species. The predicted relationship between host preference and fitness was confirmed in An. arabiensis, but not in An. gambiae s.s., whose fitness was similar on humans and other mammals. Use of typical, imperfect bednets generated only minor reductions in An. gambiae s.s. feeding success and fitness on humans, but was predicted to generate a significant reduction in the lifetime reproductive success of An. arabiensis on humans relative to cows. This supports the hypothesis that such human-protective measures could additionally benefit malaria control by increasing selection for zoophily in vectors.

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Section: An Arabiensis-single Host Feedingmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of host species and vector control measures on the fitness of African malaria vectors

et al. 2013

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“…These factors combine to increase the fitness costs associated with feeding on humans (anthropophagy), and have potential to generate selection for a shift towards feeding on non-human animals and/or biting and resting outdoors[14-16]. Such shifts may be especially likely if the fitness costs associated with adopting such novel phenotypes are minor [17]. …”

Section: Presentation Of Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection of mosquito life-histories: a hidden weapon against malaria?

Ferguson

Maire

Takken

et al. 2012

Malar J

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BackgroundThere has recently been a substantial decline in malaria incidence in much of Africa. While the decline can clearly be linked to increasing coverage of mosquito vector control interventions and effective drug treatment in most settings, the ubiquity of reduction raises the possibility that additional ecological and associated evolutionary changes may be reinforcing the effectiveness of current vector control strategies in previously unanticipated ways.Presentation of hypothesisHere it is hypothesized that the increasing coverage of insecticide-treated bed nets and other vector control methods may be driving selection for a shift in mosquito life history that reduces their ability to transmit malaria parasites. Specifically it is hypothesized that by substantially increasing the extrinsic rate of mortality experienced in vector populations, these interventions are creating a fitness incentive for mosquitoes to re-allocate their resources towards greater short-term reproduction at the expense of longer-term survival. As malaria transmission is fundamentally dependent on mosquito survival, a life history shift in this direction would greatly benefit control.Testing the hypothesisAt present, direct evaluation of this hypothesis within natural vector populations presents several logistical and methodological challenges. In the meantime, many insights can be gained from research previously conducted on wild Drosophila populations. Long-term selection experiments on these organisms suggest that increasing extrinsic mortality by a magnitude similar to that anticipated from the up-scaling of vector control measures generated an increase in their intrinsic mortality rate. Although this increase was small, a change of similar magnitude in Anopheles vector populations would be predicted to reduce malaria transmission by 80%.Implications of hypothesisThe hypothesis presented here provides a reminder that evolutionary processes induced by interventions against disease vectors may not always act to neutralize intervention effectiveness. In the search for new intervention strategies, consideration should be given to both the potential disadvantages and advantages of evolutionary processes resulting from their implementation, and attempts made to exploit those with greatest potential to enhance control.

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“…In several contexts, the estimation of the fitness of Anopheles mosquitoes is required. For instance, this may help to understand adaptation of different populations to given environmental conditions [2-4] or the opposite [5-7], interactions between the vectors and the parasites [8-12] or the vertebrate hosts [13]. More directly related to vector control, fitness measures can help deciphering the effect of insecticides [14], including new classes of insect growth regulators [15], effect of insecticide resistance [16,17], genetic manipulation of vector populations to make them resistant to parasites [18,19], or to impede their reproductive success.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A user-friendly software to easily count Anopheles egg batches

et al. 2012

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BackgroundStudies on malaria vector ecology and development/evaluation of vector control strategies often require measures of mosquito life history traits. Assessing the fecundity of malaria vectors can be carried out by counting eggs laid by Anopheles females. However, manually counting the eggs is time consuming, tedious, and error prone.MethodsIn this paper we present a newly developed software for high precision automatic egg counting. The software written in the Java programming language proposes a user-friendly interface and a complete online manual. It allows the inspection of results by the operator and includes proper tools for manual corrections. The user can in fact correct any details on the acquired results by a mouse click. Time saving is significant and errors due to loss of concentration are avoided.ResultsThe software was tested over 16 randomly chosen images from 2 different experiments. The results show that the proposed automatic method produces results that are close to the ground truth.ConclusionsThe proposed approaches demonstrated a very high level of robustness. The adoption of the proposed software package will save many hours of labor to the bench scientist. The software needs no particular configuration and is freely available for download on: http://w3.ualg.pt/∼hshah/eggcounter/.

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The impact of uniform and mixed species blood meals on the fitness of the mosquito vector Anopheles gambiae s.s: does a specialist pay for diversifying its host species diet?

Cited by 36 publications

References 50 publications

The impact of host species and vector control measures on the fitness of African malaria vectors

The impact of host species and vector control measures on the fitness of African malaria vectors

Selection of mosquito life-histories: a hidden weapon against malaria?

A user-friendly software to easily count Anopheles egg batches

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