Rodent malaria-resistant strains of the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, have slower population growth than -susceptible strains.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Trade-offs between anti-parasite defence mechanisms and other life history traits limit the evolution of host resistance to parasites and have important implications for understanding diseases such as malaria. Mosquitoes have not evolved complete resistance to malaria parasites and one hypothesis is that anti-malaria defence mechanisms are costly.

Results

We used matrix population models to compare the population growth rates among lines of Anopheles gambiae that had been selected for resistance or high susceptibility to the rodent malaria parasite, Plasmodium yoelii nigeriensis. The population growth rate of the resistant line was significantly lower than that of the highly susceptible and the unselected control lines, regardless of whether mosquitoes were infect

SUBMITTER: Voordouw MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2675531 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature