Male mosquitoes could also be almost as bloodthirsty as females beneath sure situations, new analysis suggests. That upends the notion that solely feminine mosquitoes chew, drink blood and unfold ailments whereas males sip nectar.
The discovering hints that males aren’t totally innocent and may play a tiny function in illness unfold.
Male Culex tarsalis and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, that are usually disinterested in blood, will take blood meals when humidity is low they usually can’t get sugar, researchers report October 8 in a preprint submitted to bioRxiv.org.
A graduate pupil in entomologist Jason Rasgon’s lab at Penn State seen that some male mosquitoes would generally feed on blood by way of a skinny synthetic membrane when researchers dropped the humidity and took away their ordinary nectar meals.
Rasgon needed to know if parched males would attempt to get blood from an individual, so he caught his hand in cages containing male mosquitoes. Hydrated males largely ignored him, however dehydrated males would land and probe his pores and skin. One even bit him. “It simply barely acquired into the primary layer of the pores and skin,” Rasgon says. “I used to be shocked [and] was not anticipating that to occur.”
Male’s lengthy tubelike mouth components aren’t able to piercing deeply sufficient to attract blood. However a scratch delivered by Rasgon’s cat, Jiji, allowed him to check whether or not males may get blood one other approach. Certain sufficient, dehydrated male mosquitoes sipped blood from the open wound.
In one other experiment, A. aegypti males genetically engineered to be unable to sense humidity didn’t take blood meals extra usually when humidity was low. These findings counsel that males could go for blood to slake their thirst.
One earlier analysis paper indicated that blood is poisonous to male Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes, and scientists thought all male mosquitoes lacked the power to digest blood. However in Rasgon’s experiment, blood-fed male C. tarsalis mosquitoes lived so long as those who didn’t get blood, and even a smidge longer.
In nature, A. aegypti is the essential service of yellow fever, however also can unfold Zika, chikungunya and dengue, whereas feminine C. tarsalis can unfold West Nile, St. Louis encephalitis and associated ailments (SN: 8/26/24; SN: 6/2/15). Male C. tarsalis mosquitoes might be contaminated with West Nile virus and produce infectious virus of their saliva identical to females can, the researchers discovered.
Rasgon doubts males are necessary spreaders of illness, however scientists must rethink the concept that male mosquitoes don’t feed on blood and will examine whether or not, in uncommon situations, males may have the ability to unfold viruses.
