A simple and affordable method for estimating the fluid volume a mosquito sucks using food dyes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Blood-sucking by mosquitoes is an inevitable behavior when pathogens are transmitted among humans. Adenine nucleotides such as ATP are known as phagostimulants for mosquitoes and are widely used to induce and enhance the blood-sucking activity in an artificial manner. Although using ATP solution is convenient to introduce a variety of substances (for example chemicals and pathogens) into the mosquito body via sucking, establishing an easy and cost-effective method to quantify the amount of solution ingested has yet to be reported.

Results

A set of commercial food dyes (green, blue, yellow, and red) was employed in this study. Each dye was added to ATP solution used to colorize the abdomen of Ae. aegypti female mosquitoes after ingestion. The intake of food dyes di

SUBMITTER: Sakuma C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7856782 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature