The Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10065, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University in the City of New York, New York, New York 10027, USA
Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2022 Jun 24;2022(6):Pdb.top107657. doi: 10.1101/pdb.top107657.
Male and female mosquitoes survive by feeding on floral nectar for metabolic energy, but females require blood protein, obtained from biting a host, for egg development. Although males exclusively derive energy from nectar sugars, females must select the meal that best matches their present metabolic and reproductive needs. In females, blood and nectar promote independent feeding behaviors with distinct sensory appendages, meal sizes, digestive tract targets, and metabolic fates. Understanding how male and female mosquitoes recognize, locate, and metabolize nutrients is essential for characterizing the survival and reproductive capabilities of this mosquito. Here, we provide an introduction to blood versus nectar feeding and methods to quantify nectar and blood meal sizes in individual mosquitoes. Precise quantification of meal size is crucial for ensuring consistency in assays that record events downstream of feeding behavior, including host attraction or fecundity.
雄蚊和雌蚊通过吸食花蜜获取代谢能量得以存活，但雌性蚊子需要从叮咬宿主那里获取血蛋白，以促进其卵子发育。虽然雄性蚊子只从花蜜糖中获取能量，但雌性蚊子必须选择最符合其当前代谢和生殖需求的食物。在雌性蚊子中，血液和花蜜会促进具有不同感觉附属物、摄食量、消化道靶点和代谢命运的独立进食行为。了解雄蚊和雌蚊如何识别、定位和代谢营养物质，对于描述这种蚊子的生存和繁殖能力至关重要。在这里，我们将介绍吸血和吸食花蜜的区别，并提供定量个体蚊子花蜜和血餐大小的方法。准确地量化餐食量对于确保在记录进食行为下游事件的检测中保持一致性非常重要，这些事件包括对宿主的吸引力或繁殖能力。
