Mosquitoes are the creatures that have killed the most number of humans on average each year. An estimated 1 million people die because of the myriad diseases they carry, which they transmit through biting.
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All mosquito bites come from females as they are the only ones with the mouth structure to pierce and suck blood. The male’s proboscis does not have the piercing power that the females have, thus they do not feed on blood but rather, they eat flower nectar and fruit juices.
Researchers, however, have found the oldest-known mosquito fossil in Lebanon, and these come with some surprising features. It showed two male mosquitoes which have the specialized mouth anatomy to pierce and suck blood. Therefore, at some point, male mosquitoes evolved from being hematophagous to simply feeding on plant nectar.
This also indicates that, originally, all mosquitoes were hematophagous and with the emergence of flowering plants, the males simply transitioned into becoming nectar-feeders. The significance of this is that the usual trajectory for hematophagous insects was for nectar-feeders to become blood-feeders.
With these mosquito fossils, researchers will have a better idea of the evolutionary pathway that mosquitoes took, and it will give them new avenues to study how and when those changes took place.
(Image credit: Erik Karits/Unsplash)
Source: neatorama