Hi, I'm Scientific American Podcast Editor Steve Mursky.

Here's a short piece from the August 2018 issue of the magazine in the section called

Advances, Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Blood Thirsty by Rachel Newer

Mosquitoes are the world's deadliest animals, transmitting diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people annually.

Only the females bite to acquire protein to make their eggs.

But blood can also serve as a refreshing beverage on a hot dry day.

A new study finds that dehydrated mosquitoes are more aggressive, land more often on

hosts, and feed more frequently than those with ready access to water.

In quenching their thirst, they may also increase the spread of disease.

The studies by Joshua Benoit, a biologist at the University of Cincinnati and his colleagues,

it appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.

Because some mosquitoes lay their eggs on water,

researchers have long assumed that wetter conditions lead to more mosquito-born illness.

Yet recent studies have hinted at the opposite, linking increased transmission of diseases such as West Nile fever to droughts.

Benoit and his colleagues discovery helps to resolve these counterintuitive findings.

Benoit became interested in the impact of dehydration on mosquito feeding behavior by accident.

A worker dropped a container of water-deprived mosquitoes and noticed that they dive bombed him with much greater vigor than usual.

The researchers studied three mosquito species that transmit yellow fever,

zeka, or west Nile fever.

They exposed hundreds of insects to different temperatures and humidity levels in cages with or without access to water and nectar, which is mosquito's preferred sugar source.

They then tested how often the pests chose to bite a host, in this case a warm

...