Unveiling malaria vectors: species complex and surveillance insights from Sundergarh, Odisha, India.

Background: Malaria is one of the most infectious life-threatening vector-borne diseases affected by climate change. Because of the emerging climate change problem, it was thought prudent to identify prevalent mosquito species and find the malaria parasite's presence in field-collected mosquitoes in Odisha.

Material and methods: The study was undertaken at four villages in the Rourkela, Sundergarh district of Odisha, India, from January 2018 to January 2020, generating entomological and climatic data. Field-collected mosquitoes were processed, and DNA was extracted, followed by multiplex PCR for differentiation of sibling species for Anopheles culicifacies and Anopheles fluviatilis mosquitoes. Enzyme-Linked immunosorbent assay was also performed for detection of circumsporozoite proteins of Plasmodium. Sequencing was performed, and a phylogenetic tree was constructed using the neighbor-joining method.

Results: For Anopheles culicifacies, 43.25% of mosquitoes belonged to sibling species C, followed by species B, A, and D. Similarly, for Anopheles fluviatilis, sibling species T was found in 57.5%, followed by species U and S. Sibling species were confirmed on the difference in the sequences of conserved regions of the 28S rDNA.

Conclusions: We can conclude that sibling species C (Anopheles culicifacies) was predominant in Rourkela, and sequencing further confirmed the presence of parasites (Plasmodium vivax) in Anopheles culicifacies as sibling species C.