Female mating patterns and mate quality in the dengue vector mosquito, Aedes aegypti

Lori Ying

Dengue fever affects 50-100 million people annually (Rigau, 1998). Scientists have recently developed genetic manipulation techniques to create transgenic mosquitoes refractory to disease transmission. The success of this strategy hinges on the dispersal of such genes throughout a population via matings of transgenic with wild-type mosquitoes. However, little is known about mating competitiveness of transgenic mosquitoes, or female mating patterns of mosquitoes in general . . . This study explored assortative mating of mosquitoes. Mating frequencies when a wildtype female mosquito was exposed to ten wild-type and ten mutant (Higgs white-eye) males were evaluated. The twenty males were placed in a bucket cage and a female was introduced. Immediately after copulation, the pair was aspirated out and the male eye color examined to determine its phenotype. A male of the same phenotype was replaced and the procedure repeated. A majority of matings resulted in the copulation of mutant males with wild-type females…