Mosquitoes vector multiple disease-causing pathogens detrimental to humans, imposing a high public health and economic burden. Chemical and biological larvicides are used in some settings to reduce mo...

Termites, the largest lineage of non-hymenopteran social insects, are important decomposers of plant organic matter in the tropics. Here, the authors sequence the genomes of 45 termites and two cockro...

Das Tessin meldet die erste West-Nil-Virus-Infektion in der Schweiz. Ein Risiko für die Bevölkerung wird verneint.

Nagy et al. identify a NOX-ATM-cytokine signaling axis in the Drosophila gut that is activated by infection independently of DNA damage. This pathway promotes enterocyte loss, cytokine production, and...

Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

Two institutions are coming together to create an alternative to the CDC’s vaunted Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

About EMBL-EBI EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute is a data powerhouse, utilised on a global scale to advance scientific discovery through bioinformatics and solutions to some of the world’s mos...

Transcription factors (TFs) bind specific DNA sequences to control gene expression. Modulating TF activity is of considerable therapeutic interest but very few TFs have been successfully drugged. TF D...

Mosquitoes have a substantial impact on human and animal health, but their deeper evolutionary relationships have been difficult to resolve. We inf...

Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

Here, we provide an update on invasive mosquito surveillance activities coordinated by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) between May 2020 and November 2024. Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti are ...

Background Releases of Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti are being used to effectively control diseases caused by arboviruses, such as dengue. A well-balanced larval diet is essential for producing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes with optimal fitness for release. Methods In this study, four diets with varying protein-to-carbohydrate ratios were tested with three Ae. aegypti lines (carrying the wAlbB, wMelM Wolbachia infections or uninfected) to identify optimal diets for larval rearing on the basis of diet allocations ranging from 0.4 to 3.2 mg/larva/day. The diets were selected on the basis of a review of existing literature and are characterized by progressively increasing protein and decreasing carbohydrate content: diet 1 (Pd) was based on plant-based protein (low protein and high carbohydrate), diet 2 (Kd) was based on animal-based protein (moderate protein and high carbohydrate), diet 3 (Fd) involved Hikari fish food (high protein and moderate carbohydrate), and diet 4 (IAEA) followed a widely used very-high-protein and low-carbohydrate diet developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The optimal concentration for each diet was determined using a fitness index that incorporated pupation success, fecundity, hatch proportion and development time. Results The optimal dietary allocations for diets 1–4 were 1.6, 1.2, 1.2 and 0.8 mg/larva/day, respectively, regardless of Wolbachia status. There was a consistent significant positive relationship between female wing length and fecundity in wAlbB (r2 = 0.881), wMelM (r2 = 0.329), and uninfected (r2 = 0.886) mosquitoes. Diet 3 (Fd) at optimal food allocation reduced a fitness cost commonly associated with the wAlbB line compared with the uninfected line when provided at the optimal concentration. The wMelM line showed a persistently low fecundity regardless of diet and concentration. Conclusions These findings highlight the importance of an appropriate larval diet and dietary allocations in optimizing mosquito fitness for Wolbachia-based vector control programs. Further research into dietary composition, gut microbial interactions and Wolbachia associations could refine larval nutrition strategies, enhancing the effectiveness of mass-rearing for release programs. Graphical abstract

Abstract. Infection with endosymbionts can cause changes in the phenotype of their insect hosts, particularly for life-history traits such as fecundity and