Major
Biology
Anticipated Graduation Year
2022
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
The LUC insectary maintains a small colony of Anopheles stephensi, a genus of mosquito best known for being a transmission vector of blood-borne diseases such as Malaria. This colony is kept in a walk-in incubator held at 75-80% humidity with a temperature of about 27°C. Adult mosquitos are kept in trap buckets with mesh lids that allowed for blood-feeding using ketamine anesthetized mice. We were recently challenged with an unexpected significant die-off of most of our colony. Over the course of the last few months, we managed to sustain the living mosquitos enough to restore the colony to almost full strength.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Dr. Stefan M. Kanzok, Biology Department
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Rearing malaria mosquitos of the species Anopheles stephensi
The LUC insectary maintains a small colony of Anopheles stephensi, a genus of mosquito best known for being a transmission vector of blood-borne diseases such as Malaria. This colony is kept in a walk-in incubator held at 75-80% humidity with a temperature of about 27°C. Adult mosquitos are kept in trap buckets with mesh lids that allowed for blood-feeding using ketamine anesthetized mice. We were recently challenged with an unexpected significant die-off of most of our colony. Over the course of the last few months, we managed to sustain the living mosquitos enough to restore the colony to almost full strength.