Mosquito Discovery Sheds Light On How Malaria Is Spread In South Africa

The two most successful initiatives to control mosquitoes are indoor house spraying and the use of insecticide-treated bed nets.

- Maureen Coetzee, Basil Brooke & Lizette Koekemoer

These target mosquitoes that feed on humans inside their homes and then rest indoors. But there are no methods to control mosquitoes that operate outdoors.

The reason is the variable behaviour of the main malaria-carrying mosquito in the country, Anopheles arabiensis. Although it prefers to feed on people inside their houses – and rest there while its eggs develop – it’s not averse to doing so outside. This makes it less amenable to house spraying, which means that it’s never completely eradicated from an area.

Our research at the Wits Research Institute for Malaria, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, has uncovered that another mosquito vector, Anopheles vaneedeni, also carries the parasite and is also amenable to biting and breeding outside. Although