Abstract
The 24-h day involves cycles in environmental factors that impact organismal fitness. This is thought to select for organisms to regulate their temporal biology accordingly, through circadian and diel rhythms. In addition to rhythms in abiotic factors (such as light and temperature), biotic factors, including ecological interactions, also follow daily cycles. How daily rhythms shape, and are shaped by, interactions between organisms is poorly understood. Here, we review an emerging area, namely the causes and consequences of daily rhythms in the interactions between vectors, their hosts and the parasites they transmit. We focus on mosquitoes, malaria parasites and vertebrate hosts, because this system offers the opportunity to integrate from genetic and molecular mechanisms to population dynamics and because disrupting rhythms offers a novel avenue for disease control.
Highlights
The 24-h day involves cycles of predictable environmental changes that include rhythms in ambient light, temperature, humidity, UV radiation and resource availability
Organisms are assumed to have evolved mechanisms to respond directly to both the daily light:dark cycle, as well as molecular circadian clock mechanisms to anticipate daily rhythms in environmental factors that influence fitness and organize their physiology and behaviors in accordance [1]. These rhythms are colloquially and collectively known as “circadian rhythms.”. They include: (1) daily rhythms observed only under light:dark conditions (“diel rhythms”), which may or may not be endogenously driven by a molecular circadian clock; and (2) endogenously-regulated rhythms observed under constant environmental conditions
An example of adaptive time-of-day regulated biology in some insects includes minimizing the risk of desiccation by being nocturnal because environmental humidity is higher at night than in the day [5]
Summary
The 24-h day involves cycles of predictable environmental changes that include rhythms in ambient light, temperature, humidity, UV radiation and resource availability. Organisms are assumed to have evolved mechanisms to respond directly to both the daily light:dark cycle, as well as molecular circadian clock mechanisms to anticipate daily rhythms in environmental factors that influence fitness and organize their physiology and behaviors in accordance [1]. We outline the time-of-day-specific biology of interactions between mosquitoes and hosts and parasites and explain how rhythms can be the cause and consequence of competing selection pressures. We integrate this information into a framework to investigate circadian rhythms in malaria transmission and suggest novel interventions resulting from disrupting rhythms
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