Abstract
One of the key determinants of a haematophagous vector’s capacity to transmit pathogens is its selection of which host to secure a blood meal from. This choice is influenced by both intrinsic (genetic) and extrinsic (environmental) factors, but little is known of their relative contributions. Blood fed Anopheles mosquitoes were collected from a malaria endemic village in Ghana. Collections were conducted across a range of different host availabilities and from both indoor and outdoor locations. These environmental factors were shown to impact dramatically the host choice of caught malaria vectors: mosquitoes caught indoors were ten-fold more likely to have sourced their blood meal from humans; and a halving in odds of being human-fed was found for mosquitoes caught only 25 m from the centre of the village. For the first time, we demonstrate that anthropophagy was better explained by extrinsic factors (namely, local host availability and indoor/outdoor trapping location) than intrinsic factors (namely, the (sibling) species of the mosquito caught) (respective Akaike information criterion estimates: 243.0 versus 359.8). Instead of characterizing biting behaviour on a taxonomic level, we illustrate the importance of assessing local entomology. Accounting for this behavioural plasticity is important, both in terms of measuring effectiveness of control programmes and in informing optimal disease control strategies.
Highlights
One of the key determinants of a haematophagous vector’s capacity to transmit pathogens is its selection of which host to secure a blood meal from
The introduction of indoor residual spraying and insecticidal nets has resulted in a change in the biting behaviour of major malaria vectors with many mosquito species seeking a higher proportion of blood meals outdoors[3,4,5,6] and/or from non-human hosts[7,8,9,10]
Even the paragons of anthropophagy such as An. gambiae s.s. are just as unfussy in their host choice; but, we acknowledge that the result we have found in our field site would need replication elsewhere to develop the evidence base to confirm this speculation
Summary
One of the key determinants of a haematophagous vector’s capacity to transmit pathogens is its selection of which host to secure a blood meal from. Collections were conducted across a range of different host availabilities and from both indoor and outdoor locations These environmental factors were shown to impact dramatically the host choice of caught malaria vectors: mosquitoes caught indoors were ten-fold more likely to have sourced their blood meal from humans; and a halving in odds of being human-fed was found for mosquitoes caught only 25 m from the centre of the village. The introduction of indoor residual spraying and insecticidal nets has resulted in a change in the biting behaviour of major malaria vectors with many mosquito species seeking a higher proportion of blood meals outdoors[3,4,5,6] and/or from non-human hosts[7,8,9,10]. We discuss the consequences of our findings to assessing, and perhaps even augmenting, future control strategies
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