Hi! I'm originally from Maine but currently a senior postdoc at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. I study mosquito biology and how this impacts virus transmission. Recently a lot of my work has been looking at how virus moves through the mosquito body and overcomes various barriers.

I hope that future studies will examine the impact of more frequent feeding on Wolbachia-based pathogen-blocking in other Wolbachia-mosquito combinations and that this helps inform future control and modeling efforts. Thanks for following and check out the paper for more details! 12/12

This may have implications for Wolbachia-transinfected mosquito release programs and could indicate that Wolbachia has a greater impact than current model predictions that only account for single blood feedings. 11/12

While this work was largely done using certain strains of wAlbB and Aedes aegypti and may not hold true for all Wolbachia-mosquito combinations, this study indicates that Wolbachia-based pathogen-blocking using wAlbB is robust under more frequent feeding conditions. 10/12

This trend held true for double-fed WT and wAlbB mosquitoes but further modeling showed that single-fed and double-fed wAlbB mosquitoes had a lower chance of surviving past the EIP relative to WT counterparts. 9/12

The increase in speed of dissemination with a second blood meal also led to a decrease in extrinsic incubation period (EIP) and a greater probability of surviving to transmit virus. 8/12

Further, DENV-2 titers were higher in double-fed WT and wAlbB mosquitoes but this was not linked to Wolbachia density and appeared to be connected to dissemination status. 7/12

This trend of earlier DENV-2 midgut escape held true for WT mosquitoes and those with wAlbB Wolbachia. Numbers of wMelM mosquitoes were too low to make any firm conclusions here. 6/12

We also found that DENV-2 escapes the mosquito midgut faster when mosquitoes are given a second blood meal. This more closely matches mosquito feeding patterns in the wild where mosquitoes attempt to refeed shortly after egg laying. 5/12

As expected, we found that both wAlbB and wMelM Wolbachia strains reduced DENV-2 infection in Aedes aegypti with wMelM providing more protection against initial midgut infection. 4/12

This study provides new insights into Wolbachia-based pathogen-blocking under more frequent mosquito blood feeding. Let's do a quick summary thread but check out the paper for more details! 3/12

These include Braiya Nolan, Afeez Sodeinde, @isabelott.bsky.social, @perran.bsky.social, Xinyue Gu, @nathangrubaugh.bsky.social, Alex Perkins, @brackneylab.bsky.social, and @chantalvogels.bsky.social 2/12