Characteristics of Blood-Sucking Pump of a Mosquito

Abstract

Many researches and developments have tried to realize a μTAS in several fields, but it has not been realized yet because of a scale effect in the course of miniaturization. It is difficult to make an enough volume of flow in a micro tube. This is a bottleneck of realizing the μTAS. We have tried to apply a unique mechanism of insects to the μTAS devises. In this paper, we focused on a blood-sucking mechanism of a mosquito that can obtain blood at the rate of approximately 1.0 μl/min. To understand the structure of their pumps, we made a mosquito into many slices, and anatomized under a microscope; we also let mosquitoes feed on human blood on a glass plate. We found the following results: 1) a manner of blood sucking, 2) a power density of the pump system by an analysis of flowing red blood cells at a tip of proboscis of mosquito. We have succeeded to reveal the blood-sucking mechanism of the mosquitoes, which can be applied to micro fluid devices.