Meeting 1202 Minutes

Minutes from the 1202nd Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

President Tianzhu Xiong called the 1202nd meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:40 pm on Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 in MCZ 101.

Approx. 16 members and guests were in attendance.

Old business: Wendy Andrea Valencia Montoya and Brian Chan were confirmed for membership.

New business:

Scott Smyers announced upcoming field trips to Appledore Island on July 11 and Wachusett Mountain.

Jay Shetterly brought a 1986 copy of the club’s longtime publication, Psyche.

Our speaker was Douglas Paton, Senior Postdoc at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
His talk was entitled “Deadly cargo: How a mosquito’s impulse to reproduce drives human illness”

Anautogeny (blood feeding, which allows a female mosquitoto provision her eggs with essential lipids and proteins), is the fundamental driver of a number of human diseases, including malaria. Dr. Paton presented an overview of the biology of the major Afro-tropical malaria mosquito vector, Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto and its sibling species.

Mosquito mating and blood feeding behavior plus the biology of the causative agent of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, interact to determine the transmission of malaria. Transmission requires that the mosquito take multiple blood meals: first from an infected host, and in turn to an uninfected person. This requires a mosquito life span of 3-4 weeks, making old mosquitoes the most dangerous.

Bednets treated with insecticide have been a successful method of controlling malaria infections, but resistance to the insecticides that are safe for use in bednets is becoming a problem so alternative solutions are being investigated.

Research from the Catteruccia lab and elsewhere shows that mosquito mating, blood-feeding, egg development and malaria parasite transmission are linked through the action of the steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E). 20E is a component of a plug transferred along with a sperm bundle during mating and is essential for successful mating. Interruption of this process has potential for mosquito control. Another possibility is “curing” the mosquito with ATQ, a prophylactic that interrupts transmission of the parasite.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:55 for discussion and refreshments.

Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary