Aedes aegypti disregard humidity-related conditions with adequate nutrition
- Author:
Canyon, D.V.
;
Muller, R.
;
Hii, J.L.K.
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- From:Tropical Biomedicine
2013;30(1):1-8
- CountryMalaysia
- Language:English
-
Abstract:
Weather variations have clear associations with the epidemiology of dengue fever
and populations of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Data on humidity associations, however, lags
with respect to its effect on host-biting, nectar-seeking and survival. This experimental study
on Ae. aegypti, sourced from the arid tropics, investigated the effect of low and high relative
humidity and diet in relation to host-biting, temporal variations in feeding frequency, and
mosquito mortality. In each environmental setting, 10 replicates, containing one male and
five female mosquitoes, were challenged with different nutritional sources every six hours
over 12 days. Results showed that host-biting did not diminish in low humidity and was six
times higher than expected. Sucrose feeding was observed to significantly moderate hostbiting
and water alone was inadequate for survival. The high host-biting rates help to explain
the intensity of dengue epidemics, while the ability of the mosquito to disregard adverse
humidity-related conditions helps to explain how dengue epidemics in arid tropical regions
can be just as devastating as those in the wet tropics.
- Full text:W020150618491630565959.pdf
