Mosquitoes' Thirst for Human Blood Has Increased as Biodiversity Loss Worsens

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Mosquitoes' thirst for human blood has increased as biodiversity loss worsens

Stretching along the Brazilian coastline, the Atlantic Forest is home to hundreds of species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and fishes. However, due to human expansion, only about a third of the forest's original area remains intact.

As human presence drives animals from their habitats, mosquitoes that once fed on a wide variety of hosts might be finding new, human targets to quench their thirst for blood, finds a study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

"Here we show that the mosquito species we captured in remnants of the Atlantic Forest have a clear preference for feeding on humans," said senior author Dr. Jeronimo Alencar, a biologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro.

"This is crucial, because in an environment like the Atlantic Forest with a great diversity of potential vertebrate hosts, a preference for humans significantly enhances the risk of pathogen transmission," added co-author Dr. Sergio Machado, a researcher who studies microbiology and immunology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

[...] Out of a total of 1,714 captured mosquitoes belonging to 52 species, 145 females were engorged with blood. Blood meals consumed by 24 of those mosquitoes could be identified and were sourced from 18 humans, one amphibian, six birds, one canid, and one mouse. Some blood meals were made up of multiple sources; the meal of a mosquito identified as Cq. Venezuelensis was made up of amphibian and human blood. Mosquitoes belonging to the species Cq. Fasciolata fed on both a rodent and a bird as well as a bird and a human, respectively.

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