Abstract
ObjectiveDue to different concerns in using appropriate mosquito blood feeding techniques, this work focused on evaluating the effectiveness of two artificial mosquito feeding systems (Rutledge and Hemotek) and three different membranes (Parafilm, mouse and chicken skins). Female mosquitoes from an An. coluzzii strain aged between 2 and 5 days were exposed to blood with the two systems at time intervals (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 min) with blood used on the day of collection, the next day and 2 days after.ResultsOur results showed that the Hemotek system gave better blood feeding rates than the Rutledge system. Among the three membranes, the blood feeding rates with chicken and mouse skins were higher than those provided by the Parafilm membrane. Likewise, blood stored 1 day after collection gave higher levels than blood used on the day of collection and 2 days after. Regardless of the system, the lowest blood feeding rates were observed at 5 min compared to the other exposure times.
Highlights
Artificial blood feeding of mosquitoes is routinely used in vector competence studies and in the maintenance of colonies of hematophagous mosquito species, including those that transmit arboviruses and malaria
We evaluated the effect of the systems and membranes on the proportions of mosquitos’ blood-feeding using the Odds Ratio implemented on the package fmsb available from the R software version 3.3.1. [7]
The blood feeding rates (BFR) were significantly different between the two systems (49% for Hemotek and 42.3% for the Rudledge system, χ2 = 14.5, df = 1, p = 0.0001)
Summary
3259 female mosquitoes were exposed to blood feeding during 6 replicates (2 for each of the 3 experiments). The odds of blood feeding were higher for the Hemotek system (Table 1). Of the 18 tests performed, respectively 21% (114/542), 63.3% (348/550) and 62.4% (340/545) of the females were fed with Parafilm® membrane, chicken skin and mouse skin while the respective levels were 19.5% (106/544), 55.4% (300/542) and 52.2% (280/536) for the Rutledge system. The OR from chicken and mouse skins provided similar levels of blood fed mosquitoes but the proportions were highly significant compared to the Parafilm® membrane (Table 1). Experiment 2 where mosquitoes were exposed to the blood used the day after it was collected, showed the higher proportion of blood fed mosquitoes than the first and the third experiment
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