Mosquito Bites

Alfonso J. Rodriguez-Morales & Carlos Franco-Paredes

Is the resulting injury from a mosquito sting, which could produces from a local inflammatory reaction to, after an incubation period, a vector-borne disease, such as malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis, and yellow fever, among others. The mosquito bites its victims (humans or animals) because it is a hemophagus insect (use blood for feed and for its reproductive cycle). Their ability to bite is given by the prosbocis (an extended mouth structure). In the female mosquitoes, the piercing mouthparts allow them to draw blood into their alimentary tract. Many substances that make them able to bite practically being few or none perceived by the victim (anesthetics) and substances that make efficient the extraction of blood (anticoagulants) are secreted from salivary glands of the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes that transmit disease-caus-ing pathogens (parasites, viruses, or bacteria) belong taxonomically to the suborder Nematocera (order Diptera), and particularly to the family Culicidae. In this family are located ...

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