Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, carriers of many devastating diseases including dengue, Zika, and yellow fever, thrive in a variety of environments. While particularly pesky in jungles and forests, they even flourish in cities, laying eggs in nutrient-poor pools of standing rainwater. This has left scientists wondering: how is it that they survive so well in urban areas?
A preprint published on February 23 in bioRxiv shows that female mosquitoes might be able to sculpt the environment where they lay their eggs, depositing growth-boosting bacteria in the water alongside their young. The researchers say that the findings might help us develop new ways to control the disease-bearing pests.
“We’ve always wondered how mosquitoes manage to get enough nutrients from such a poor environment,” says study author Marcelo Lorenzo, a biologist at the René Rachou Institute in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Previous research has shown that adult mosquitoes have a symbiotic relationship with some ...
