Abstract
Diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes are a tremendous health and socioeconomic burden with hundreds of millions of people being impacted by mosquito-borne illnesses annually. Many factors have been implicated and extensively studied in disease transmission dynamics, but knowledge regarding how dehydration impacts mosquito physiology, behavior, and resulting mosquito-borne disease transmission remain underdeveloped. The lapse in understanding on how mosquitoes respond to dehydration stress likely obscures our ability to effectively study mosquito physiology, behavior, and vectorial capabilities. The goal of this review is to develop a profile of factors underlying mosquito biology that are altered by dehydration and the implications that are related to disease transmission.
Highlights
Diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes are a tremendous health and socioeconomic burden with hundreds of millions of people being impacted by mosquito-borne illnesses annually
Phenotypic plasticity in desiccation-resistance traits is embodied in dry season-Anopheles dynamics and it is probable in other environment-mosquito systems, such as in Culex spp. during diapause
It can be said that seasonal dynamics contribute to West Nile virus (WNV) prevalence [49,51], and, from a more physiologically-based study, rainy season temperature and relative humidity can contribute to Dengue virus (DENV) propagation within the mosquito, which contributes to dengue hemorrhagic fever outbreaks [179]
Summary
Pathogens that are transmitted by mosquitoes cause over 700 million human infections and more than one million deaths each year [1]. The punctual response by mosquitoes to counteract water loss could offer one explanation as to how the effects of dehydration stress have remained relatively unnoticed and understudied These stressors and compensatory mechanisms may appear to offset one another, it is likely that, through compensating for the lost water, the effects of dehydration and hydration mechanisms cause alterations in other facets of mosquito biology that contribute to disease transmission dynamics. The net contributions of stressors to disease transmission rates may be minuscule or even null, it has been postulated that water content regulation and hydration-balancing mechanisms are associated with fitness tradeoffs and they could be exploited for vector control [9]. Numerous interactions between these factors are discussed in 4.1, but avenues for further research on indoor biome impact remain unexplored [94]
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