Aedes albopictusCDC PUBLIC HEALTH IMAGE LIBRARYHuman infections caused by the vector-borne chikungunya virus spiked around 2004, thanks to a mutation in the virus that enabled Aedes mosquitoes to transmit it. Since then, chikungunya has been circulating in countries near the Indian Ocean and recently spread to the Caribbean. Last month, a Florida man was the first to be infected with chikungunya on US soil.
The virus has been able to cover new ground across the globe because of a complex interplay of factors, researchers from the Pasteur Institute in Paris show in a paper published today (August 13) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“This study demonstrates that the transmission of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease that is spreading quickly on a global scale, depends strongly on local mosquito populations and mean environmental temperature,” entomologist Courtney Murdock at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved with the work told The Scientist in an e-mail.
In an effort to measure the “vector competence”—the ability of a vector to become infected and transmit the pathogen—of different mosquitoes, the Pasteur Institute’s Karima Zouache and her colleagues reared Tiger mosquitoes (Ae. albopictus) from ...
