It is wise to stay away from mosquitoes to prevent bites. However, a recent study from North Carolina State University suggests that having a swatter handy may be an added benefit to the mosquito-infested outdoors. The ground-breaking research, published in PLOS ONE, looked at mosquitoes found in residences in the Ivory Coast region of Africa’s Ivory Coast.
“When you’re exposed to mosquitoes, you’re concerned about blood feeding,” said R. Michael Roe, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Entomology at NC State and co-corresponding author of the study. “Our hypothesis is that mosquitoes can physically transmit the bacteria by landing on you or defecating on household surfaces, as flies do. “Maybe not, but no one has studied it before.
Research associates at the Center Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques collected 79 adult female Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes from households in the rice-producing province of Ivory Coast. Mosquitoes were sent to NC State to analyze the microbiome inside and on external body surfaces.
Some of the findings were surprising:
“We found greater bacterial diversity internally than externally, which was inconsistent with what was found in morning flies, for example,” said Loganathan Ponnusamy, NC State’s senior research fellow in entomology and co-author of the paper. “At the same time, we found a lot of external bacterial differences between houses, but not a lot of internal differences between houses, which makes sense. A lot of what’s found inside is related to the nectar or honey consumed when mosquitoes forage outside.”
The researchers also discovered — for the first time in the academic literature — fructobacillus, which is generally found in nectar sources such as flowers and bee hives, which points to mosquitoes visiting those plants or nectar sources, said Kaiying Chen, a postdoctoral researcher and first author at NC State. paper. Perhaps more ominously, the researchers also found large numbers of Staphylococcus and two variants of Rickettsia. The genus of these bacteria is associated with human and animal diseases. “That’s another risk,” Roe said. “Mosquitoes carry bacteria externally and internally, and they come into your home, possibly carrying pathogenic bacteria.”
