An Australian mosquito species knows the best spot to drink its bloody meals: a frog’s nostril.
Behavioral biologist John Gould discovered the mosquitoes-exhibit-a-preference-for-extracting-blood-from-frog-nostrils.html” title=”Certain Australian mosquitoes exhibit a preference for extracting blood from frog nostrils”>nostril-nibbling insects while studying frogs in ponds on Australia’s Kooragang Island. From 2020 through 2022, Gould occasionally noticed mosquitoes on the faces of the frogs he was surveying and would take photos.
“It was only once I laid out all the photos together that I realized something very particular and surprising was happening,” says Gould, of the University of Newcastle in Callaghan, Australia. In the 12 photos that Gould took of mosquitoes on frogs, every single bloodsucker was feeding on the skin of the frog’s nostril.
Some mosquitoes feed only on frogs and toads but bite various parts of the body. The mosquito that caught Gould’s eye, Mimomyia elegans, has a generalized diet of amphibians, mammals and birds. “Yet its feeding strategy when using frogs appears to be highly specialized,” Gould says.
2023-11-27 10:00:00
Source from www.sciencenews.org