Fig. 5

The mosquito response to the blood meal is source-dependent. Five-day old mosquitoes were blood fed on different sources of blood: human, bovine (Bos taurus), avian (Gallus gallus) and artificial (Skito-Snack). Blood meals were supplemented with EdU, and blood-fed mosquitoes were maintained on sucrose/EdU for 72 h prior to dissection. Guts were treated with a Click-iT cocktail to label EdU (green) and stained with an anti-PH3 antibody (red) and DAPI (blue). Representative images of the posterior midgut region of interest (ROI) at 72 h post-blood feeding are shown in (A), scale = 50 µm. Quantification of the percentage of EdU-positive cells in the ROI in Aedes aegypti after feeding with the four different blood sources (B) showed that human and bovine blood induced stronger responses in this mosquito when compared with avian blood or the artificial blood meal. When comparing the responses of different species to the same blood-source (C-F), Anopheles gambiae showed the strongest response to all but avian blood (E). Results are from at least three biological replicates. Values on top indicate mean values, and error bars are SEM. Statistics: Mann–Whitney test; *, **, and *** respectively indicate P values of < 0.05, < 0.001, and < 0.001