Sugar restriction and blood ingestion shape divergent immune defense trajectories in the mosquito Aedes aegypti

Abstract

Immune defense is comprised of (1) resistance: the ability to reduce pathogen load, and (2) tolerance: the ability to limit the disease severity induced by a given pathogen load. The study of tolerance in the field of animal immunity is fairly nascent in comparison to resistance. Consequently, studies which examine immune defense comprehensively (i.e. considering both resistance and tolerance in conjunction) are uncommon, despite their exigency in achieving a thorough understanding of immune defense. Furthermore, understanding tolerance in arthropod disease vectors is uniquely relevant, as tolerance is essential to the cyclical transmission of pathogens by arthropods. Here, we tested the effect(s) of dietary sucrose concentration and blood ingestion on resistance and tolerance to Escherichia coli infection in the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti. Resistance and tolerance were measured concurrently and at multiple timepoints. We found that mosquitoes from the restricted sugar treatment displayed enhanced resistance at all timepoints post-infection compared to those from the laboratory standard sugar treatment. Blood also improved resistance, but only early post-infection. While sucrose restriction had no effect on tolerance, we show that consuming blood prior to bacterial infection ameliorates a temporal decline in tolerance that mosquitoes experience when provided with only sugar meals. Taken together, our findings indicate that different dietary components can have unique and sometimes temporally dynamic impacts on resistance and tolerance.