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Dryad

Data from: Diversity and plasticity in mosquito feeding patterns: a meta-analysis of ‘universal’ DNA diet studies

Abstract

Although mosquitoes can have innate preferences for particular blood-meal hosts, their realised feeding patterns on different host species can be modified under climate and land use change, with implications for disease spread. It is therefore important to understand the niche breadth of vectors and to what extent shifts in feeding patterns are predictable. We investigated global shifts in feeding patterns among different functional and taxonomic groups of host species for six prominent disease-vectoring mosquitoes.Time period: 2000–2019. Major taxa studied: six disease-vectoring mosquito species: Aedes aegypti, Ae. albopictus, Anopheles funestus, An. gambiae, Culex pipiens, and Cx. quinquefasciatus. Focusing on blood meal studies that used universal molecular methods, we compiled evidence from >15,600 blood-meals for the six mosquito species. We estimated mosquito’s host niche breadth, and we used hierarchical Dirichlet regression models to investigate shifts in feeding patterns in relation to human and livestock density, land use, and climate gradients. We estimated host ranges of 179–321 species for each of the two Culex mosquitoes and 24 - 65 species for Aedes mosquitoes, comprising considerably broader host niche breadths than previously anticipated. We found some evidence that shifts in feeding patterns among different host functional and taxonomic groups were associated with environmental conditions such as temperature and livestock density, while our results also demonstrate that, with the currently available evidence, global predictions of shifts in mosquito feeding patterns are challenged by considerable uncertainty. Our global metaanalysis afforded first insights into the shifts of feeding patterns in variable environments, suggesting that host choice is not a simple function of host availability, but contingent on other environmental drivers. Improving resolution and consistency of data gathering and reporting will improve the precision of how blood-meal studies can inform us of present and potential risks of pathogen transmission events.