Influence of Host Blood Meal Source on Gut Microbiota of Wild Caught , a Dominant Arboviral Disease Vector.

Blood feeding is an important behavior of , a dominant arboviral disease vector, as it can establish and transmit viruses to humans. Bacteria associated with the mosquito gut can modulate the biological characteristics and behavior of disease vectors. In this study, we characterized the gut microbiota composition of human-blood-fed (HF), non-human-blood-fed (NHF) and non-fed (NF) field-collected mosquitoes, using a 16S metagenomic approach, to assess any association of bacterial taxa with the blood-feeding behavior of A significant difference in the microbiota composition between the HF and NF mosquito group was observed. A significant association was observed in the relative abundance of families and in the HF group in contrast to NF and NHF mosquitoes, respectively. At the class level, two classes ( and ) were found to be in higher abundance in the HF mosquitoes compared to a single class of bacteria () in the NF mosquitoes. These results show that human-blood feeding may change the gut microbiota in wild populations. More research is needed to determine how changes in the midgut bacterial communities in response to human-blood-feeding affect the vectorial capacity of