Innate preference or opportunism: mosquitoes feeding on birds of prey at the Southeastern Raptor Center.

The amplification of mosquito-borne pathogens is driven by patterns of host use by vectors. While each mosquito species is innately adapted to feed upon a particular group of hosts, this "preference" is difficult to assess in field-based studies, because factors such as host defenses and spatial and temporal overlap of mosquitoes and hosts affect which host animals actually get bitten. Here we examined patterns of host use by mosquitoes feeding on caged raptors at a rehabilitation and education center for birds of prey in Alabama, U.S.A. PCR-based techniques were used to determine the host species fed upon. Of 19 raptor species at the facility, seven were found to be fed upon by mosquitoes. Feeding indices and linear regression indicated that no species or family of raptor were significantly preferred over another (R(2)=0.46). Relative abundance adjusted for bird size explained a statistically significant amount of the variation in relative host use (R(2)=0.71), suggesting that bird size is an important component of host selection by mosquitoes. These findings support the hypothesis that traits of host animals drive patterns of host use by mosquitoes in nature, an interaction that leads to amplification of mosquito-borne viruses.