{"doi":"10.35662/unine-these-2848","title":"Impact of insecticide resistance on the efficacy of malaria vector control","abstract":"The entomological work required to characterize the effectiveness of vector control tools against insecticide-resistant mosquitoes is one of the highest priorities of contemporary malaria research. Yet, current methods for resistance monitoring and evaluation of vector control tools leave out the most important parameters for malaria transmission. Since longevity, blood feeding success and biting rate over the lifetime affect the ability of mosquitoes to transmit malaria, they should be an integral part of the evaluation of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs) efficacy. In this thesis, the direct and delayed effects of the most widely distributed LLINs in Africa have been evaluated with resistant mosquitoes in Côte d’Ivoire. First, we quantified the impact of LLIN exposures on the capacity to survive several gonotrophic cycles and the benefices of taking one or more blood meals during the lifetime. Second, we studied several parameters influencing mosquito behavior in interaction with LLINs by comparing the condition of the mosquito net (damaged or not), access to the host (direct or indirect), choice between a protected or non-protected host, the distance from the host, different larval diets, and the ability to detect odors. In our laboratory studies, mosquitoes (pre-) exposed to a LLIN had reduced host searching and feeding activity. One of the mechanisms involved is probably the absence of odor detection by mosquitoes for a short period of time after an exposure to a LLIN. Nonetheless, semi-field experiments mitigated these results as the LLIN direct efficacy seemed to be compromised by resistance as it offered only slight personal protection. That being said, blood fed mosquitoes surviving a first sublethal dose of insecticide in the laboratory did not necessarily go through additional gonotrophic cycles, either because they died before that, or because of a lower ability to take further blood meals later in life. Besides, when mosquitoes missed a chance to feed, being blocked by an intact LLIN, their chance to take bloodmeals later in life was lower compared to mosquitoes having the opportunity to feed directly through a net upon their first attempt. However, given the nuances in the direct effect of insecticide on feeding success in laboratory and semi-field settings, caution is needed when translating the results of laboratory outputs into normative guidelines for testing the efficacy of LLINs. This is reinforced by the influence of the juvenile environment on the variability of adult mosquito behavior. Overall, this work demonstrates LLINs efficacy despite insecticide resistance and underlines the urgency of finding new standardized methods to monitor the sub-lethal effects on mosquitoes for a better understanding of the consequence of resistance on malaria transmission. It also stresses the need for a better consideration of the effect of insecticide on odor detection, host recognition and memory in the malaria vector.","journal":null,"year":2020,"id":144820,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.959,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":613864,"name":"Priscille Barreaux","orcid":"0000-0002-4839-6441","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:48.191325Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}