Fig. 2

Hemolymph antimicrobial activity and midgut microbiota load. a Average antimicrobial activity expressed as change in the absorbance of total body fluids of sugar-fed (black bar) and 24-hour blood-fed (white bar) An. arabiensis (Aa), An. coluzzii (Ac) and An. quadriannulatus (Aq) female mosquitoes. Analysis of covariance was used to compare regression lines, P-values are shown in the text. Error bars show standard error of the mean for data pooled from 10 midguts in two independent biological replicates. b Median relative abundance of bacterial 16S rRNA gene measured by qPCR. Error bars represent inter-quartile ranges for data from three independent biological experiments, each consisting ten pooled midguts. c Relative abundance of microbiota from the mosquito guts of co-cultured mosquitoes 24 h after blood-feeding