Developmental Traits
The performance of mosquitoes is shaped by the environmental conditions that they experience.
Temperature is especially important, with warming often speeding up development from eggs to adults and increasing mosquito activity periods. Temperature profiles are also shaped by land use: the ‘urban heat island’ phenomenon is known to boost temperatures in urban settings, given the reduction in green space in favour of heat-trapping grey concrete surfaces.
Understandings of mosquito developmental responses to temperature and land use changes are needed to better assess how disease vectors respond to environmental change. This work package will collect mosquitoes from natural, farmland, and urban habitats and expose these different populations to a variety of current/future temperatures.
The populations will be monitored closely over time, with different traits measured, including survival and developmental rates, lifespan, size, and sex ratio. We will test whether responses to temperature are shaped by land use, informing predictions of how human activities might influence vector-borne disease risk.
