Ha Y. Lee S. Lee S.
Experimental study on feeding-behavior differences between two species of mosquitoes using X-ray imaging technique
Reporter: Ha Y.
Mosquitoes transmit tropical diseases, such as dengue fever, encephalitis, filariasis and malaria. These mosquito-bones diseases depend on the species of mosquitoes. There are three genuses of mosquitoes; Anopheles, Culex, and Ae-des. However, what kinds of differences lead to the different mosquito-borne diseases are still unclarified. The two mosquitoes show distinctive differences in their morphological structure of proboscis and sitting posture which have influ-ence on their feeding behavior or capacity to transmit diseases. In this study, we compared the morphological structure of pump organs and feeding habaviors of two different species of mosquitoes using X-ray micro-imaging technique. The feeding-pump volume of each sample exhibits clear differences depending on their liquid-feeding process. In addition, cyclic volume variation and feeding frequency also show distinctive differences in the expansion period and the ex-pansion ratio between the two species of mosquitoes. This distinctive results would be helpful to understand the characteristic feeding behaviors of mosqui-toes as a vector for tropical diseases.
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