2025/05/01 by Catherine E. Oke, Samuel S. C. Rund, Maxwell G. Machani +4 · 1 voice
Immunology and Microbiology · Medicine · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Invertebrate Immune Response Mechanisms #Malaria Research and Control #Insect symbiosis and bacterial influences
paper · pdf · doi:10.1101/2025.04.28.650966
openalex publication_date 2025/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
Background: spp. that vector malaria. However, shifts in biting behaviour to earlier or later hours when people are unprotected can undermine the efficacy of ITNs. Despite the implications for malaria transmission, the mechanisms underlying these shifts remain poorly understood. Because food availability mediates activity and foraging rhythms, and ITNs block access to human blood as a food source, we hypothesized that nutritional deprivation could cause mosquitoes to shift their biting behaviour to earlier or later in the diel cycle. Methods: mosquitoes with a blood meal on day 3 post-emergence, and access to one of three feeding treatments that varied in nutritional resources: (i) 0.5% sucrose, (ii) 10% sucrose, or (iii) 10% sucrose plus an additional blood meal on day 6. We released mosquitoes into a semi-field system on day 10 with human-mimic traps to investigate how food availability impacted the time of day that mosquitoes host seek. Results: Nutritional resources determine both the likelihood and time of day that host seeking occurs. Specifically, low-resourced mosquitoes were 2-3 fold more likely to host seek overall, and 5-10 fold more likely to host seek at an earlier time of day than well-resourced mosquitoes (fed 10% sucrose with and without an additional blood meal), which predominantly sought a host in the second half of the night time. Conclusions: We reveal that mosquito nutritional condition drives plasticity in biting time of day, suggesting it is an underappreciated contributor to residual malaria transmission. Furthermore, our results suggest that targeting mosquito nutrition (e.g. sugar-baited traps) could influence mosquito behaviour in ways that affect the success of ITNs. More broadly, understanding the drivers of biting time of day variation is crucial for the future success of vector control tools and controlling malaria transmission.