Environmental and Biomedical Thematic Group, Ifakara Health Institute, Ifakara, Tanzania.
J Evol Biol. 2012 Mar;25(3):452-60. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02442.x. Epub 2012 Jan 4.
We investigated the fitness consequences of specialization in an organism whose host choice has an immense impact on human health: the African malaria vector Anopheles gambiae s.s. We tested whether this mosquito's specialism on humans can be attributed to the relative fitness benefits of specialist vs. generalist feeding strategies by contrasting their fecundity and survival on human-only and mixed host diets consisting of blood meals from humans and animals. When given only one blood meal, An. gambiae s.s. survived significantly longer on human and bovine blood, than on canine or avian blood. However, when blood fed repeatedly, there was no evidence that the fitness of An. gambiae s.s. fed a human-only diet was greater than those fed generalist diets. This suggests that the adoption of generalist host feeding strategies in An. gambiae s.s. is not constrained by intraspecific variation in the resource quality of blood from other available host species.
非洲疟疾传播媒介冈比亚按蚊 s.s.。我们通过对比它们在仅人类和混合宿主饮食（由人类和动物血液餐组成）上的繁殖力和存活率，来测试这种蚊子对人类的特化是否可以归因于专门化和一般化喂养策略的相对适应性优势。当只给予一次血液餐时，冈比亚按蚊 s.s. 在人类和牛血液中存活的时间明显长于犬类或鸟类血液。然而，当反复给予血液时，没有证据表明仅人类饮食喂养的冈比亚按蚊 s.s. 的适应性优于一般化饮食喂养的。这表明冈比亚按蚊 s.s. 采用一般化的宿主喂养策略不受来自其他可用宿主物种血液资源质量的种内变异的限制。
