BiteOscope, an open platform to study mosquito biting behavior
- Stanford University, United States
- Institut Pasteur, France
Abstract
Female mosquitoes need a blood meal to reproduce, and in obtaining this essential nutrient they transmit deadly pathogens. Although crucial for the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, blood feeding remains poorly understood due to technological limitations. Indeed, studies often expose human subjects to assess biting behavior. Here, we present the biteOscope, a device that attracts mosquitoes to a host mimic which they bite to obtain an artificial blood meal. The host mimic is transparent, allowing high-resolution imaging of the feeding mosquito. Using machine learning we extract detailed behavioral statistics describing the locomotion, pose, biting, and feeding dynamics of Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus, Anopheles stephensi, and Anopheles coluzzii. In addition to characterizing behavioral patterns, we discover that the common insect repellent DEET repels Anopheles coluzzii upon contact with their legs. The biteOscope provides a new perspective on mosquito blood feeding, enabling the high-throughput quantitative characterization of this lethal behavior.
Data availability
Source data files for Figures 2 and 3 are provided as Supplementary Files, code to generate figures is available from Github: https://github.com/felixhol/biteOscope
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Burroughs Wellcome Fund (Career Award at the Scientific Interface)
- Felix JH Hol
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (PiQMosqBite)
- Felix JH Hol
Dutch Research Council NWO (Rubicon)
- Felix JH Hol
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-16-CE35-0004-01)
- Louis Lambrechts
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-18-CE35-0003-01)
- Louis Lambrechts
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID)
- Louis Lambrechts
National Institutes of Health (DP2-AI124336)
- Manu Prakash
United States Agency for International Development (Grand Challenges: Zika and Future Threats)
- Felix JH Hol
- Manu Prakash
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Hol et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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BiteOscope, an open platform to study mosquito biting behavior
eLife 9:e56829.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56829
