Abstract
Disease-mediated mosquitoes have been receiving much attention, as the World Health Organization recently declared the Zika virus a global public health emergency. Mosquitoes transmit pathogens that cause various tropical diseases including malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever as well as Zika virus. The vector efficiency of mosquitoes depends on their blood-feeding characteristics and the mechanics of their blood-sucking pump system, but only a few studies have attempted to investigate these key issues. In this study, we demonstrate the rapid and gluttonous liquid-feeding characteristics of Ae. albopictus which transmits Zika virus can be explained by similar proportion of two blood-sucking pumps and accelerated liquid intake driven by fast expanding of pumps. Our results provide insight into the vector efficiency of Ae. albopictus in terms of feeding velocity, pumping frequency, liquid-intake rate, and wall shear stress.
Highlights
Mosquitoes transmit various pathogens that cause infectious tropical diseases including dengue fever, malaria, filariasis, and Zika virus [1], which was declared a public health emergency of international concern on Feb 2016 [2]
A female mosquito sucks blood which contains pathogens through its proboscis by operating two pump organs located in the heads
We examined the morphological characteristics of the proboscises and heads of two female mosquitoes: Ae. albopictus and Ae. togoi (Fig 1)
Summary
Mosquitoes transmit various pathogens that cause infectious tropical diseases including dengue fever, malaria, filariasis, and Zika virus [1], which was declared a public health emergency of international concern on Feb 2016 [2]. The Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which are found in the USA, southern Europe, Asia, and South Korea, transmit Zika virus [2,4]. This species has been known as a very aggressive biter [5]. Aedes togoi occurs from subarctic to subtropic area along the coasts of the East Asian contries [7]. It is mainly involved in the transmission of numerous species of filariae, yellow fever, and Japanese encephalitis [8,9,10]
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