Last Updated: 27/05/2025
Outdoor resting and sugar feeding behaviours of African malaria vectors
Objectives
The goal of this project is to investigate Anopheles mosquito outdoor resting and sugar- feeding behaviours at ecologically diverse sites in Mali to determine how complex relationships between these behaviours and the seasonally changing local environment affect malaria transmission. Gaining knowledge about feeding behaviours can help in the development of new vector control tools such as outdoor traps and baits.
This project, which builds on extensive preliminary studies in Mali and Israel, includes three specific aims:
- Characterize how malaria vector species select from different types, configurations, and qualities of potential outdoor resting microhabitats and sugar-feeding centers, and behaviourally adapt to seasonal changes in their local environment,
- Determine how local environmental resources critical for malaria vector outdoor resting and sugar feeding affect malaria vectorial capacity and spatial aggregation patterns of malaria parasite transmission and
- Develop and evaluate new approaches and field-based criteria to identify concentrations of adult anopheline mosquitoes in the outdoor environment.
This project focuses on the outdoor resting and sugar-feeding behaviours of Anopheles malaria vector populations in Mali, West Africa, where, as in most African countries, malaria is a serious public health problem.
An understanding of mosquito behaviours in the outdoor environment is becoming increasingly important because there is a growing awareness that vector control tools beyond those used exclusively inside houses are needed to achieve successful malaria control and local elimination. Currently, for the major malaria vector species in Africa, Anopheles gambiae, An. arabiensis, and An. funestus, there is only limited knowledge of their outdoor resting behaviour, and the role of sugar or nectars in their life history is mostly speculated due to a lack of field-based evidence. Furthermore, resting and sugar feeding behaviours likely exhibit extensive phenotypic plasticity but the role of the ecological environment as the possible key driver has not been investigated.
Innovative aspects include: First, new field-based approaches will be used to investigate two important but highly neglected mosquito behaviours. Second, this is the first study to examine how mosquitoes adapt their outdoor-resting and sugar-feeding behaviours in response to seasonal changes in their local environment. Third, this project will explain how outdoor-resting and sugar-feeding behaviours impact vector survival and malaria parasite transmission dynamics. Fourth, new predictive models for identifying concentrations of malaria vectors will be rigorously field-tested and refined to improve their accuracy and potential utility beyond Mali. By providing a strong scientific basis for development of new approaches and tools for anopheline mosquito vector control in outdoor environments, this project has strong potential for helping Mali and other countries improve malaria control and advance toward the ultimate goal of elimination.
PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project focuses on the outdoor resting and sugar-feeding behaviours of vector species of Anopheles mosquitoes at malaria endemic sites in Mali, West Africa. It addresses the need to better understand how adult mosquitoes adapt to seasonally changing environmental conditions, how limitations in critical environmental resources including vegetated habitats and flowering plants impact malaria transmission and the challenge of developing new geographical approaches and tools to locate outdoor concentrations of adult mosquitoes. This research will contribute to more effective outdoor vector control to reduce malaria transmission in Africa.
Mar 2013 — Feb 2018
$2.91M
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