Abstract
Background Current tools and strategies are not sufficient to reliably address threats and outbreaks of arboviruses including Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Hence there is a growing public health challenge to identify the best new control tools to use against the vector Aedes aegypti. In this study, we investigated Ae. aegypti sugar feeding strategies in Bamako, Mali, to determine if this species can be controlled effectively using attractive toxic sugar baits (ATSB). Methodology We determined the relative attraction of Ae. aegypti males and females to a variety of sugar sources including flowers, fruits, seedpods, and honeydew in the laboratory and using plant-baited traps in the field. Next, we observed the rhythm of blood feeding versus sugar feeding activity of Ae. aegypti in vegetation and in open areas. Finally, we studied the effectiveness of spraying vegetation with ATSB on Ae. aegypti in sugar rich (lush vegetation) and in sugar poor (sparse vegetation) urban environments. Principal findings Male and female laboratory sugar feeding rates within 24 h, on 8 of 16 plants offered were over 80%. The survival rates of mosquitoes on several plant sources were nearly as long as that of controls maintained on sucrose solution. In the field, females were highly attracted to 11 of 20 sugar sources, and 8 of these were attractive to males. Peak periods of host attraction for blood-feeding and sugar feeding in open areas were nearly identical and occurred shortly after sunrise and around sunset. In shaded areas, the first sugar-seeking peak occurred between 11:30 and 12:30 while the second was from 16:30 to 17:30. In a 50-day field trial, ATSB significantly reduced mean numbers of landing / biting female Ae. aegypti in the two types of vegetation. At sugar poor sites, the mean pre-treatment catch of 20.51 females on day 14 was reduced 70-fold to 0.29 on day 50. At sugar rich sites, the mean pretreatment catch of 32.46 females on day 14 was reduced 10-fold to a mean of 3.20 females on day 50. Conclusions This is the first study to show how the vector Ae. aegypti depends on environmental resources of sugar for feeding and survival. The demonstration that Ae. aegypti populations rapidly collapsed after ATSB treatment, in both sugar rich and sugar poor environments, is strong evidence that Ae. aegypti is sugar-feeding frequently. Indeed, this study clearly demonstrates that Ae. aegypti mosquitoes depend on natural sugar resources, and a promising new method for vector control, ATSB, can be highly effective in the fight against Aedes-transmitted diseases.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e0214170 |
Journal | PLoS ONE |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2019 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:NIH NIAID grant number U19 AI129387 was awarded to JB and the funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, the decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. See the funders website at https:// www.nih.gov. We dedicate this work to Fatoumata Sissoko who passed away suddenly after the completion of this work. We also wish to thank the participating communities of Bamako in Mali and M. Makan Keita for his GPS work. This work, titled “ICEMR-Mali: Multidisciplinary research for malaria control and prevention in West Africa”, was supported by NIH NIAID grant number U19 AI129387 awarded to SD. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This study was also supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health grant number R01AI100968 awarded to JB. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors declare that no competing interests exist in relation to this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Sissoko et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General