Comparative assessment of mosquito size and receptiveness toP. falciparuminfection of two rearing procedures forAnophelesmosquitoes

AbstractMalaria is transmitted whenAnophelinemosquitoes ingestPlasmodiumparasites during blood-feeding. Artificial feeding assays allow mosquitoes to take up blood from membrane feeders, and are widely used to study malaria transmission. These assays require large quantities of mosquitoes; insectaries optimize their rearing procedures to generate high yields of permissive, homogeneous mosquito populations. Rearing ofAnopheline stephensimosquitoes was protocolized at the Radboudumc in the 1980s, yet infection outcomes remain heterogeneous. This study explores possible improvements in mosquito rearing to improve homogeneity of the resulting mosquito populations. It compares the current mass-rearing standard with an adapted alternative approach from another institute that optimizes larval density per tray and applies a diet that has previously been reported. Differences between procedures were assessed by measuring mosquito size by proxy of wing-length and imbibed blood meal volume. To assess receptiveness toP. falciparuminfection mosquitoes were fed cultured gametocytes. We observed a slight decrease in mosquito size when applying the alternative rearing procedure, but generated equally parasite-receptiveP. falciparummosquitoes compared to the standard procedure. We conclude that both rearing protocols can be used to generate susceptible mosquitoes for conducting malaria research.