Chapter 7: Behavioural ecology of plant-mosquito relations
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This document, in two parts, evaluates the behavioural aspects of plants as a food source for mosquitoes. First is a summary of the established basics of mosquito plant feeding. These include nutrient sources, composition of meals, timing of feeding, source location, meal processing and utilisation, and contribution to flight, survival and reproduction. Second is an exploration of prominent unsettled questions that need attention: (1) If anthropophilic species thrive best on human blood, why are they attracted to plants? (2) Do mosquitoes commonly pierce plant tissue and ingest their fluids? (3) Does sugar feeding decrease or increase biting frequency? (4) What are the primary olfactory plant-host cues? (5) What are the primary visual plant-host cues? Do chemical and visual cues work together, or does one dominate? (6) Is there plant-host specificity or are there preferences, based on nutrient pay-off? (7) Learning: are host-plant preferences modified by experience? (8) What is the significance of overlapping blood-host and sugar-host cues? (9) Can sugar feeding by males affect female fecundity? (10) What controls the decision to respond to sugar hosts or blood hosts? (11) Do mosquitoes play an important role in plant pollination? (12) Do vertebrate pathogens alter a mosquito’s response to plants, and do the plants affect the pathogens? (13) Is plant sugar both a limited resource and a population-limiting one?