African Malaria Mosquito

• It is not one species but a complex of several almost identical species that can be told apart only genetically and that differ greatly in their ability to transmit malaria.
• Its preference for biting at night and indoors is what makes insecticide-treated bed nets so effective, the single measure that has prevented most malaria deaths over the past two decades.
• It is the subject of the first gene drive trials, a technique that seeks to spread through the population a gene that makes it sterile or unable to transmit the parasite.
• It is the main vector of malaria in Africa and, by that route, one of the animals that causes the most human deaths each year.
• Only the females bite, and only to obtain the blood proteins needed to mature their eggs; both sexes normally feed on nectar.
• Its preference for people is extreme: it is almost strictly anthropophilic and bites mostly at night, inside houses. That combination is what makes it so effective at transmitting the parasite, and also what makes treated bed nets work.
• What is called Anopheles gambiae is actually a complex of at least eight sibling species, morphologically identical and with very different transmission capacities, which can only be told apart genetically. That confusion set the fight against malaria back by decades.
• It is the species on which gene drives are being trialled: CRISPR constructs designed to spread through the population a gene that causes female sterility and collapses the species locally. Laboratory trials managed to wipe out entire caged populations, and their possible release in the field is one of the most important open bioethical debates.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Sunlit pools, cattle hoofprints and temporary standing water in sub-Saharan Africa

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complejo_Anopheles_gambiae