Hey Sugar!

It’s common knowledge that a mosquito’s favourite food is blood. People get bitten by female mosquitoes in search of a bloody meal, which is how they transmit parasitic diseases such as malaria. But they’ll also feed on sugars in plant nectar, fruits and tree sap. Because the types of fruits and flowers in different habitats vary – and plants don’t all make exactly the same types of sugars – each mosquito population will have access to its own particular range of sweet stuff. Surprisingly, it turns out that the types of sugars that mosquitoes feed on affects a whole range of things, from their lifespan and lust for blood to the way in which the malaria parasite grows in their bodies and is transmitted. As researchers struggle to find ways to control mosquitoes and malaria, one natural way to control the disease might be to grow plants that interfere with parasite infection.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Domonbabele F. d. S. Hien and colleagues
• Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (IRSS), Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Research published in PLOS Pathogens, August 2016