Mortality and reproductive dynamics of Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) fed human blood

Mortality is a critical factor in determining a mosquito's ability to transmit pathogens. We investigated the effect of human blood feeding and reproduction on mortality of the dengue virus vector, Aedes aegypti, by conducting a life-table study of male and female mosquitoes maintained on one of three diets: 10% sucrose, human blood or human blood plus 10% sucrose. We examined the effect of host availability by offering human blood to mosquitoes every day or every other day. Mortality of females was age-dependent and best fit by a logistic or logistic-Makeham model. The availability of blood increased survival; survival of females fed blood plus sugar was greater than those only fed sugar. There was a peak in mortality of females fed blood alone early in life that coincided with the initiation of oviposition. When females in the blood alone group were offered blood daily, their mortality was significantly lower than when they were offered blood every other day. Unlike some previous studies, females fed blood plus sugar had higher fitness than females fed blood alone. Increased fitness may have been due to differences in housing mosquitoes individually in separate cages versus as a group of many mosquitoes in each cage. It was not due to longer survival of males who had access to sugar as a food source. Our results demonstrate that reproductively active Ae. aegypti exhibit age-dependent mortality, which refutes the assumption of age-independent mosquito mortality and underscores the need to incorporate age-dependent factors into pathogen transmission models and research on mosquito biology in general.