Conspecific sharing of breeding sites by anopheline female mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) inferred from microsatellite markers

The number of Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles arabiensis females that used each of the 33 sampled breeding sites in west Kenya was estimated by microsatellite markers and related statistics to test the hypothesis that conspecific females share aquatic sites. Totally, 166 An. gambiae and 168 An. arabiensis larvae were identified and were genotyped. The mean number of larvae per breeding site was 8.3 for An. gambiae and 8.4 for An. arabiensis. The likelihood method estimated that, for An. gambiae, the mean number of females that would have laid eggs per breeding site was 5.2 and ranged from 2 to 9, and for An. arabiensis, the mean was 5.0 with a range of 2-10. The clustering method estimated that the mean number of females laying eggs per breeding site was 6.8 for An. gambiae. The results provide molecular evidence that females of one or both species share breeding sites.