Experimental research on blood sucking phenomena of a female mosquito

암모기 흡혈과정에 대한 실험적 연구

As a carrier of malaria and sneak of blood, mosquitoes are an unpleasant insect. However, there are several unknown natural secretes related with mosquitoes. Among them, we focused on the blood sucking process of a female mosquito. The main objective of this study is to understand the mosquito's blood sucking mechanism that can be used to resolve the problem encountered in the injection or transport of infinitesimal biological fluids in a micro-chip. At first, the velocity fields of blood-sucking flow in a proboscis were measured using a micro-particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. The velocity signals of flow in the proboscis show periodic variation. This seems to be resulted from the beating of the pharyngeal pump which works as driving power. To analyze the pumping mechanism, the temporal variation of the pharyngeal pump was visualized using the synchrotron X-ray micro-imaging technique. The volume variation was estimated by the help of digital image processing techniques. Once the main mechanism of blood sucking process was found, a effective micro-pumping system with high efficiency would be developed in near future.