抄録
Most people know that mosquitoes bite us, and cause mild or sometimes severe itching, but it is not necessarily common knowledge that only female mosquitoes suck blood to produce eggs for the next generation to succeed. Unfortunately this insect does not produce just one batch of eggs, but bites again and again, and as is well known they may transmit dangerous microorganisms from the previous host to the next host during the biting and oogenesis cycle. Understanding the role of animal blood in mosquito oogenesis may help establish effective methods to control this vector insect. Although the digestive products of the ingested blood are obviously translated into nutritional materials in the developing oocyte, such as yolk proteins or lipids, we hypothesized that animal blood may contain some special substances to activate mosquito ovarian development, since blood-feeding is quite a unique behavior among insects. During 40 years of experiments from such a nutritional point of view, however, it turned out to be rather simple; amino acids resulting from blood protein digestion have the potential to activate and promote the whole process of mosquito ovarian development when the nutrients are gradually and continuously supplied into the hemolymph of females. In this review, we will describe the studies used to reach this conclusion.
