Principal Investigator University of Florida Gainesville, Florida
Sugar is a necessary resource for numerous biological processes in mosquitoes. They often acquire sugars by consuming plant nectar, honeydew, or piercing plant tissues. Understanding the plant sugar-feeding habits of mosquitoes is crucial for understanding their ecology and the role plants play in their survival and reproduction. Molecular barcoding is one powerful tool that can help distinguish which plants mosquitoes utilize for this critical resource. Here we discuss the mechanisms by which DNA can appear in the sugar sources that mosquitoes use, hurdles to in workflow, and caveats of what this type of data can say about plant-mosquito interactions. Identifying the specific plants that mosquitoes feed on can help in designing strategies to manipulate their feeding patterns, potentially reducing their populations, or altering their behavior to decrease the transmission of vector-borne diseases.