Dehydration Bouts Prompt Increased Activity And Blood Feeding By Mosquitoes
By
Richard W. Hagan,
Elise M. Szuter,
Andrew E. Rosselot,
Christopher J. Holmes,
Samantha C. Siler,
Andrew J. Rosendale,
Jacob M. Hendershot,
Kiaira S. B. Elliott,
Emily C. Jennings,
Alexandre E. Rizlallah,
Yanyu Xiao,
Miki Watanabe,
Lindsey E. Romick-Rosendale,
Jason L Rasgon,
Joshua B Benoit
Posted 04 Apr 2017
bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/120741
Mosquitoes are prone to dehydration and respond to this stress through multiple mechanisms, but previous studies have examined very specific responses and fail to provide an encompassing view of the role that dehydration has on mosquito biology. This study examined underlying changes in biology of the northern house mosquito, Culex pipiens, associated with short bouts of dehydration. We show that dehydration increased blood feeding propensity of mosquitoes, which was the result of both enhanced activity and a higher tendency to land on a host. Mosquitoes exposed to dehydrating conditions with access to water or rehydrated individuals experience no water loss and failed to display behavioral changes. RNA-seq and metabolome analyses following dehydration indicated that factors associated with energy metabolism are altered, specifically the breakdown of trehalose to yield glucose, which likely underlies changes in mosquito activity. Suppression of trehalose breakdown by RNA interference reduced phenotypes associated with dehydration. Comparable results were noted for two other mosquito species, suggesting this is a general response among mosquitoes. Lastly, field-based mesocosm studies using C. pipiens revealed that dehydrated mosquitoes were more likely to host feed, and disease modeling indicates dehydration bouts may increase transmission of West Nile virus. These results suggest that periods of dehydration prompt mosquitoes to utilize blood feeding as a mechanism to obtain water. This dehydration-induced increase in blood feeding is likely to intensify disease transmission during periods of low water availability. Keywords: blood feeding, dehydration, mosquitoes, landing activity.
Download data
- Downloaded 583 times
- Download rankings, all-time:
- Site-wide: 39,005
- In physiology: 208
- Year to date:
- Site-wide: 106,640
- Since beginning of last month:
- Site-wide: 119,439
Altmetric data
Downloads over time
Distribution of downloads per paper, site-wide
PanLingua
News
- 27 Nov 2020: The website and API now include results pulled from medRxiv as well as bioRxiv.
- 18 Dec 2019: We're pleased to announce PanLingua, a new tool that enables you to search for machine-translated bioRxiv preprints using more than 100 different languages.
- 21 May 2019: PLOS Biology has published a community page about Rxivist.org and its design.
- 10 May 2019: The paper analyzing the Rxivist dataset has been published at eLife.
- 1 Mar 2019: We now have summary statistics about bioRxiv downloads and submissions.
- 8 Feb 2019: Data from Altmetric is now available on the Rxivist details page for every preprint. Look for the "donut" under the download metrics.
- 30 Jan 2019: preLights has featured the Rxivist preprint and written about our findings.
- 22 Jan 2019: Nature just published an article about Rxivist and our data.
- 13 Jan 2019: The Rxivist preprint is live!