Aedes aegypti blood and sugar-feeding

In the U.S., some studies suggest that improved housing quality (e.g. screened windows and doors) reduces exposure to Ae. aegypti biting; however, it unclear how household characteristics and human behaviors (e.g. air-conditioner usage) may modify feeding patterns. To better understand the relationships between household risk factors and Ae. aegypti biting, I identified bloodmeal hosts, quantified sugar-feeding prevalence, and identified disparities in human-Ae. Aegypti exposure and biting in LA. As part of this project, I developed a cheaper and more efficient assay to identify blood and sugar-feeding patterns in Ae. aegypti mosquitoes. The improved method I developed to detect blood and sugar-feeding in Ae. aegypti modifies the gold-standard anthrone anthrone and vanillin assays, which together quantify fructose, lipids, and glycogen in insects. My modifications require 1/3 of the time and 1/10 of the cost compared to the gold-standards. For this new protocol, I reduced and scaled the reagents required for the original assays to fit within 96-well microplates, which are used to read absorbance. To validate this new protocol, I tested it on two cohorts of lab mosquitoes with known feeding histories. I am now using this assay in conjunction with linear discriminant annalysis, a classification algorithm, to classify the adult Ae. aegypti I collected from LA households as having never taken a bloodmeal, likely taken one bloodmeal, or likely taken multiple bloodmeals. The publication is in preparation.