{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"institution":[{"name":"bioRxiv"}],"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,30]],"date-time":"2026-07-30T12:27:37Z","timestamp":1785414457137,"version":"3.56.0"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,8]]},"group-title":"Animal Behavior and Cognition","reference-count":35,"publisher":"openRxiv","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,8]],"date-time":"2024-10-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1728345600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000002","name":"National Institutes of Health","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["R01AI150251"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["R01AI150251"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000002","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000002","name":"National Institutes of Health","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["R01AI148551"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["R01AI148551"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000002","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000002","name":"National Institutes of Health","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["2T32AI138953-06A1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2T32AI138953-06A1"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000002","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000199","name":"United States Department of Agriculture","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["4769"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["4769"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000199","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100004897","name":"Pennsylvania Department of Health","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["Tobacco Settlement Funds"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Tobacco Settlement Funds"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100004897","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck endowment","award":["No number"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No number"]}]},{"award":["No number"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No number"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01sv5vd96","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Aedes Invasive Mosquitoes AIM COST Action","award":["CA17108"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["CA17108"]}]},{"name":"Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award","award":["DE230100067"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["DE230100067"]}]},{"name":"Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space of Germany","award":["01Kl2022"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["01Kl2022"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,19]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>\n                  Most female mosquitoes are reproductively obligate feeders on vertebrate blood to obtain nutrients required for egg production (driving transmission of vector-borne pathogens in the process), and which rely on plant sugars for their non-reproductive energy requirements. Male mosquitoes, on the other hand, are thought to rely exclusively on plant sugars for their energetic needs; indeed, this dichotomy is one of the central paradigms of medical entomology. Here, we provide multiple lines of evidence challenging this assumption. We show that when reared under dehydration\/starvation conditions, male mosquitoes will readily take blood from a membrane feeder while CRISPR mutants with impaired humidity detection do not increase their bloodfeeding rates. For multiple mosquito species, dehydrated males are attracted to human hosts and attempt to probe. We also observed several instances where dehydrated probing males were able to successfully pierce vertebrate host skin and acquire blood from a vertebrate host. When fed a blood meal containing West Nile virus, male\n                  <jats:italic>Cx. tarsalis<\/jats:italic>\n                  mosquitoes became infected with and orally transmitted the pathogen at rates and titers equivalent to females. Finally, we collected wild, putatively blood-fed male mosquitoes from Texas, USA and Mallorca, Spain, and identified vertebrate DNA in these samples (canine and human, respectively). These data suggest that under specific circumstances male mosquitoes may be able to probe and\/or ingest blood and transmit pathogens to vertebrate hosts. These results are a paradigm shift in our understanding of male mosquito biology and suggest they may be more directly involved in pathogen transmission cycles than previously recognized.\n                <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1101\/2024.10.08.617226","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,9]],"date-time":"2024-10-09T04:06:08Z","timestamp":1728446768000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Revisiting the paradigm of anhematophagy in male mosquitoes"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"given":"Jovana","family":"Bozic","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"},{"name":"The Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"},{"name":"The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Renuka E.","family":"Joseph","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"},{"name":"The Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"},{"name":"The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tse-Yu","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"},{"name":"The Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"},{"name":"The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Margaret V.","family":"Becker","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"The W. 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Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Miguel \u00c1.","family":"Miranda","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Applied Zoology and Animal Conservation Group, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain"},{"name":"Instituto de Investigaciones Agroambientales y de Econom\u00eda del Agua (INAGEA), University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Carlos","family":"Barcel\u00f3","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Applied Zoology and Animal Conservation Group, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mikel A.","family":"Gonz\u00e1lez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Departamento de Soluciones ambientales y Entomolog\u00eda. 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