Paris, February 4th, 2011 Discovery of a new group of highly
susceptible malaria mosquitoes in Africa In the course of a
large genetic study of malaria vector mosquitoes in Burkina
Faso, West Africa, researchers at the Institut Pasteur, the
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and their
collaborators have discovered a new subspecies of the mosquito
Anopheles gambiae, the world’s most important malaria vector.
This new mosquito group, which may be an especially efficient
malaria vector, was identified using a novel sampling method
that for the first time accounted for mosquito behavior. The
results of this study, published in the journal Science,
highlight the importance of including mosquito behavior as a
factor in malaria vector control strategies. A better accounting
of mosquito behavior could expand the reach of control measures
to target all malaria vector populations, and not just those
found indoors. To date, most field studies of malaria
transmission by the mosquito Anopheles gambiae h