Altitude and ecological requirements Sample Clauses

Altitude and ecological requirements. A. funestus is present in most of tropical Africa, and is the second most important vector of malaria. Abundant in open savannah but also in highlands up to 2,000m, the characteristic breeding site is a large deep and permanent pool of water shaded by vegetation, but mosquitoes also breed in swamps, lakeshores, streams, ponds, floating vegetation, low grass and rice, provided optimum breeding conditions persist. A typical A. funestus larval habitat is a large, permanent or semi- permanent body of fresh water with emergent vegetation, such as swamps, large ponds and lake edges. Larvae have been found in shaded and sunlit environments and Gillies & de Meillon [1968] concluded that A. funestus uses emergent vegetation as a refuge against predation while the shading it casts, or the presence of shade from overhanging plants, is of lesser importance. In some areas, A. funestus larvae, as with A. arabiensis, are associated with rice cultivation (e.g. Madagascar, Mali) [Xxxxxxxxx et al 1999]. Where they are found, their favoured environmental conditions are very different to those of A. arabiensis. A. funestus replaces A. arabiensis in a suc- cessive temporal process during rice plant growth, exhibiting higher densities in older, maturing fields compared to the preceding open conditions preferred by A. arabiensis [Xxxxxxxxx et al 1999]. A. funestus is considered to be highly anthropophilic [Xxxxxxxx et al 2006], which led Charlwood et al. [1996] to propose that A. funestus may have been the first Anopheline species to specialize on biting humans, surmising that its preferred larval sites (permanent water bodies in savannah-like environments) are likely to have been areas where humans first settled.