Pour some sugar on me: Mosquito sugar-feeding on endemic plants of Puerto Rico

Investigations of mosquito sugar-feeding have often been eclipsed by blood-feeding, generally leading to an unbalanced view of mosquito life history. Combined with knowledge about blood feeding, sugar-feeding can offer a more complete story of mosquito life history. Mosquitoes have been shown to take sugar meals from various sources, with floral nectaries the most commonly visited. Many species of flowers have unique characteristics such as shape, ubiquity, and color/ultraviolet (UV) reflectance that attract pollinators and nectar feeders. Studies on mosquito sugar-feeding has generally been limited to more arid/temperate environments with relatively few in tropical climates. To determine general flower nectar-feeding relationships with mosquito species we investigated two questions for the mosquito Culex antilliommagnorum in Puerto Rico: What flowers is this species feeding on? Are these flowers UV dark or UV bright? To investigate whether UV reflectance of flowers affects mosquito sugar-feeding sources, UV photos of as many flowers as possible were recorded in the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Puerto Rico. In addition, samples of these plants were collected for DNA extraction to create a DNA database via GenBank. Adult sugar-fed mosquitoes of both sexes were collected from a variety of sources and plant DNA in the mosquito’s gut was compared against the plant DNA database to narrow down potential sugar sources. Orchids and a few other plants that came up positive in the DNA tests were then used as sugar sources in survival assays with male and female Culex antilliommagnorum. This data will open more doors into investigating mosquito-plant interactions.