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Figure 2 | Parasites & Vectors

Figure 2

From: Infection with dengue-2 virus alters proteins in naturally expectorated saliva of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

Figure 2

The manifold potential effects of altered salivary proteins on mosquito feeding and DENV transmission. In order to achieve a successful blood feeding, an infected mosquito might: A1) Increase its salivary, and consequentially viral, inoculum in order to restore a normal level of anti-hemostatic and pain-reducing salivary proteins relative to an uninfected mosquito; A2) given reduced anti-hemostatic and pain-reducing salivary proteins, attempt refeeding if (1) the pain perception at the bite site alerts the host or leads to a clot-induced disruption of feeding (2) causing the mosquito to seek another bite site, increasing overall viral inoculum (3) represented by increasing t (the probability of transmission success) in our vectorial capacity (VC) equation; B) Alternatively, if this interrupted female moved on to another host in order to acquire a sufficient blood-meal after a clot-induced or host-triggered interruption, then a subsequent transmission event could occur, even though DENV transmission had previously occurred during the failed previous feeding attempt, represented by aINF in our VC equation. C) The impacts of these potential transmission enhancements due to changes in transmission success probability and daily biting rate could yield an increase in the vectorial capacity of the mosquito (ΔVC) relative to a baseline calculation of VC, and is represented by increasingly darker colors. The x-axis is the difference in probability of transmission success relative to baseline (tmin = .5) and the y-axis is the difference in in biting rate between uninfected mosquitoes and infected mosquitoes (a-aINF) = Δ(daily biting rate). Thus the coordinates (0,0) refer to t = .7 (Δ transmission success of .2) and a = aINF (no enhancement to biting rate).

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