DOI: 10.5061/dryad.422jp
title: Data from: Fitness consequences of altered feeding behavior in immune-challenged mosquitoes

description: Background: Malaria-infected mosquitoes have been reported to be more
 likely to take a blood meal when parasites are infectious than when
 non-infectious. This change in feeding behavior increases the likelihood
 of malaria transmission, and has been considered an example of parasite
 manipulation of host behavior. However, immune challenge with heat-killed
 Escherichia coli induces the same behavior, suggesting that altered
 feeding behavior may be driven by adaptive responses of hosts to cope with
 an immune response, rather than by parasite-specific factors. Here we
 tested the alternative hypothesis that down-regulated feeding behavior
 prior to infectiousness is a mosquito adaptation that increases fitness
 during infection. Methods: We measured the impact of immune challenge and
 blood feeding on the fitness of individual mosquitoes. After an initial
 blood meal, Anopheles stephensi Liston mosquitoes were experimentally
 challenged with heat-killed E. coli at a dose known to mimic the same
 temporal changes in mosquito feeding behavior as active malaria infection.
 We then tracked daily egg production and survivorship of females
 maintained on blood-feeding regimes that either mimicked down-regulated
 feeding behaviors observed during early malaria infection, or were fed on
 a four-day feeding cycle typically associated with uninfected mosquitoes.
 Results: Restricting access to blood meals enhanced mosquito survival but
 lowered lifetime reproduction. Immune- challenge did not impact either
 fitness component. Combining fecundity and survival to estimate the
 population- scale intrinsic rate of increase (r), we found that, contrary
 to the mosquito adaptation hypothesis, mosquito fitness decreased if blood
 feeding was delayed following an immune challenge. Conclusions: Our data
 provide no support for the idea that malaria-induced suppression of blood
 feeding is an adaptation by mosquitoes to reduce the impact of immune
 challenge. Alternatively, the behavioral alterations may be neither host
 nor parasite adaptations, but rather a consequence of constraints imposed
 on feeding by activation of the mosquito immune response, i.e.
 non-adaptive illness-induced anorexia. Future work incorporating field
 conditions and different immune challenges could further clarify the
 effect of altered feeding on mosquito and parasite fitness.
description: Data: Altered feeding
 behavior in mosquitoes and associated fitness parametersData includes life
 history data for a total of 921 individual mosquitoes, each numbered with
 a unique id number given in the first column. Feed.D4-Feed.D16 describe
 feeding compliance with -1 meaning offered a blood meal but not taken, 1
 meaning offered and fed, and 0 meaning not offered a blood meal and, thus
 not fed. DOD represents day of death and is the day a mosquito was
 observed to die, counting day 0 as the first day of the experiment and 24
 as the last day of the experiment. Natural.LH indicates whether a mosquito
 died naturally (1) or not (0). Dying unnaturally include deaths by
 experimental handling or escape from container. Wing length is the length
 of the right wing in mm. Immune and Feeding treatments indicate which
 experimental group the mosquito was placed in. Replicate indicates which
 of two experimental replicates the mosquito was in, with "5"
 taking place in Spring 2015, and "6" taking place in Summer/Fall
 2015. Replicate.end indicates the number of adult days over which
 experimental observations took place. Fitness is the estimate of
 individual intrinsic rate of increase, r, based on the survival and
 reproduction data for that individual (methods for modeling r described in
 Ohm 2016). Clutch1-Clutch5 are the sums of eggs produced for each
 individual after each blood meal, for example Clutch 1 is the sum of eggs
 an individual produced after the first blood meal Clutch 2, after the
 second, etc. d0-d23 list the number of eggs each individual laid for that
 day, from d0 (the start of the experiment) to d23 (last day of the
 experiment). Age is the final age of the mosquito on it's death day,
 adding the average length of time spent in the juvenile stage to it's
 observed death day. tot_r is a slightly different calculation of r that
 used different assumptions in its calculation not discussed in Ohm et al
 2016.All
 life table data - all(1).csv