Congratulations to Fritz Lab undergraduate researcher, and mosquito culturer extraordinaire, Mervin Cuadera.  Mervin was awarded an Ernst Cory scholarship from the UMD Department of Entomology for his outstanding service to our Department. 

The Culex pipiens bioforms (known as molestus and pipiens) have divergent host preferences, where one prefers mammals and the other prefers humans.  When these forms mate and produce hybrid offspring, we showed that the hybrids were willing to feed on both avian and mammalian hosts (Fritz et al. 2015).  This demonstrated that host preference is genetically based and also underscores the importance of hybridization to West Nile virus transmission.  To build upon this work, PIs Fritz, Gaudry, and Machado were recently awarded University of Maryland funding from the Brain and Behavior Initiative to investigate the genomic basis of host preference in Cx. pipiens.