6 - The host associations of Uranotaenia sapphirina

The females of most mosquito species need to feed on the blood of another animal in order to obtain proteins and nutrients necessary to complete the development of their eggs. Mosquitoes take blood from a wide range of animals, including amphibians, birds, fishes, mammals, and reptiles, and host associations vary by species. Each mosquito species takes blood from a distinct subset of the animal community within its ecosystem. Some are relative generalists that take blood meals opportunistically from most vertebrates, but most specialize, to varying extents, on particular types of hosts. For the majority of mosquito species, host associations have not been characterized, and much of what we know about mosquito host associations is gleaned from species that are known vectors of medically important pathogens. Despite attempts to determine the host associations of Uranotaenia sapphirina, the identity of the hosts of this mosquito have been something of a mystery. Uranotaenia lowii, the only other Uranotaenia species in the eastern US, feeds only from frogs, which they locate acoustically, by listening for the songs of calling male frogs, and the host associations of Uranotaenia sapphirina had been presumed to parallel those of Uranotaenia lowii. However, the bright red blood meals of Uranotaenia sapphirina cannot be identified using traditional blood meal analyses, designed to identify vertebrate hosts. Only by observing these mosquitoes in nature were we able to determine their host associations.