Institut Pasteur de Madagascar, Medical Entomology Unit, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
Institut Pasteur, Université de Paris Cité, Biology of Host-Parasite Interactions, Paris, France.
Parasite. 2024;31:31. doi: 10.1051/parasite/2024032. Epub 2024 Jun 18.
Anopheles coustani has long been recognized as a secondary malaria vector in Africa. It has recently been involved in the transmission of both Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax in Madagascar. As most secondary malaria vectors, An. coustani mainly bites outdoors, which renders the control of this mosquito species difficult using classical malaria control measures, such as the use of bed nets or indoor residual spraying of insecticides. For a better understanding of the biology and vector competence of a vector species, it is useful to rear the species in the laboratory. The absence of a colony hinders the assessment of the bionomics of a species and the development of adapted control strategies. Here, we report the first successful establishment of an An. coustani colony from mosquitoes collected in Madagascar. We used a forced copulation procedure as this mosquito species will not mate in cages. We describe our mosquito colonization procedure with detailed biological features concerning larval to adult development and survival, recorded over the first six critical generations. The procedure should be easily applicable to An. coustani from different African countries, facilitating local investigation of An. coustani vector competence and insecticide resistance using the colony as a reference.
库蚊长期以来一直被认为是非洲的次要疟疾传播媒介。最近，马达加斯加的库蚊已参与传播恶性疟原虫和间日疟原虫。与大多数次要疟疾传播媒介一样，库蚊主要在户外叮咬，这使得使用经典的疟疾控制措施（如使用蚊帐或室内滞留喷洒杀虫剂）来控制这种蚊子变得困难。为了更好地了解媒介物种的生物学和媒介能力，在实验室中饲养该物种是有用的。由于缺乏一个群体，因此难以评估物种的生物学特性，并制定适应的控制策略。在这里，我们报告了首次从马达加斯加采集的蚊子中成功建立了库蚊群体。我们使用强制交配程序，因为这种蚊子在笼子里不会交配。我们描述了我们的蚊子殖民化程序，详细介绍了从幼虫到成虫发育和生存的生物学特征，并在最初的六个关键世代中进行了记录。该程序应该很容易适用于来自不同非洲国家的库蚊，从而可以使用该群体作为参考，方便对库蚊的媒介能力和抗药性进行本地调查。
