Abstract
To understand the possibility of the spreading of vector borne diseases, the study on host preference of the vector mosquitoes is an important epidemiological tool. In Japan, although there is no report of the outbreak of West Nile fever so far, the most potential vector species of the virus prevalent here is Culex pipiens pallens, which is closely related to the Cx.pipiens of USA.In the present study,Cx.p.pallens were collected from Tsunami stricken areas of Miyagi prefecture in 2011, after the earthquake disaster and blood meal analysis was performed using the primers for cytochrome b gene and 16S ribosomal RNA regions of the mitochondrial DNA and compared with the previous data studied during 2004 to 2007. The study revealed that 92.1% mosquitoes were fed on avian blood while only 7.9% were fed on mammalian blood. But the result of the study of 2004 to 2007 showed that 50% Cx.p. pallens were positive for Avian blood and 38.6% were positive for mammalian blood where about 11.4% mosquitoes were fed on both avian and mammalian hosts. Although Cx.p.pallens has preference for avian hosts, a good number of mosquitoes showed affinity to human as well as other mammalian hosts. After the disaster, since the population in tsunami affected areas gets limited, a reflection in the change of feeding pattern of this species was observed, indicating that the species is highly opportunistic regarding its host preference.
