As we come to the end of April, and World Malaria Day on 25th April, many of us are reflecting on what progress has been made in the last 12 months towards eradicating the disease. The theme for this year’s World Malaria Day is ‘Time to deliver zero malaria: invest, innovate, implement’.
For the last few decades, pathogenic fungi have been used as biopesticides to control insect pests, and specifically Beauveria spp. and Metarhizium spp. have been used to control mosquitoes. But, resistance against these fungi is emerging already, so there is a need to find new entomopathogenic microorganisms. And it seems as though many of the likely candidates could be underneath our feet in the soil.
Mosquito larvae from a population that were known to be highly resistant to insecticides were mixed in solutions containing different concentrations of Chromobacterium anophelis sp. nov. IRSSSOUMB001. 80% of larvae put into the solutions containing the higher bacterial concentrations were killed in 3 days, but lower concentrations of the bacterial solution were not so effective and killed only 25-50% of the larvae by the end of the 3 days.
Progeny wing size – the proxy for body size – was measured from mosquitoes reared from infected and uninfected female mosquitoes. Progeny wing size was significantly reduced when a mosquito was infected with the bacteria. Female wing size dropped from an average of 2.55mm to 2.1 mm in mosquitoes born from infected mosquitoes. For males, the average wing size dropped from 2.44 mm to 1.99 mm.
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