Blood Meal Sources and Feeding Behavior of Anophelines Mosquitoes in Bure District, Northwestern Ethiopia

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Abstract Background: Mosquito blood meal sources determine their own feeding rates, adult survival, fecundity, hatching rates, and developmental times. The only female Anopheles mosquito takes blood meals from humans, birds, mammals, or other vertebrate animals for egg development. Studies of host preference patterns in blood-feeding anopheline mosquitoes are crucial to incriminating malaria vectors. However, the human blood index, foraging ration, and host preference index of anophelines mosquitoes were not known so far in Bure district Ethiopia.Methods: The origin of blood meals from all freshly fed and a few half-gravid exophagic and endophagic females collected using the center for disease control and prevention light trap catches were identified as human and bovine using Enzyme Linked Immune Sorbent Assay. Human blood index, forage ratio, and host feeding index were calculated.Results: A total of 617 specimens belonging to An. arabiensis (n = 209), An. funestus (n= 217), An. coustani (n= 123), An. squamosus (n= 54) and An. cinereus (n= 14) were only analyzed for blood ELISA. 577 of the overall specimens were positives for blood antigens of the host bloods. All anopheline mosquitoes assayed for blood meal sources had extremity mixed blood meals sources than single blood meals. The FR for a human was slightly > 1.0 than bovine for all Anopheles species. HFI for each pair of vertebrate hosts revealed that humans was a bit preferred blood meal source to bovine for all species (except An. squamosus), but did not exhibit a marked host selection.Conclusions: All assayed anopheline mosquitoes for blood meal ELISA had a mixed feed which tends to diminish the density of gametocytes in the mosquito stomach, thereby reducing the chance of fertilization of the female gamete and reduce the chances of malaria vector becoming infected. Moreover, An. coustani was the only species that had only human blood meal alone mean that this species has a potential to transmit the disease. Therefore, combination zooprophylaxis should be reinforced as a means of vector control because the study sites are mixed dwelling.

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