(2/4) Our #mosquitos are hungry: Females and males in our insectary consume around 40 kilograms of sugar each year.

🦟 Today is #worldmosquitoday! It's a good opportunity to show what it takes to rear Anopheles mosquitos for our #malaria research.
First, let's look at how many mosquitos are bred in the Levashina Lab each year.
Check out the following posts to learn what it takes to keep them happy! (1/4) 👇

(3/4) But sugar alone is not enough to breed #mosquitos. Females need to feed on a tiny drop of #blood (1-10 µL) to produce eggs, but this amount adds up!

(4/4) Finally, someone needs to take care of the #mosquitos. Twelve lab technicians and students work around 90 hours each week to maintain our #insectary - that's 4,680 hours each year. All these hours lay the groundwork for our #malaria research 🦟

🚨 Paper alert!
Check out the latest work from the Reber Lab 📌 New research by @simonereber.bsky.social and @biswashere.bsky.social, now published in @natcomms.nature.com 🥳

For #WorldMalariaDay, we wanted to highlight our institute's #malaria scientists and technicians. So we asked them to share a malaria fact and portrayed them in their work environment. It turned out to be quite a collection—have a look for yourself: www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/2181779/worl...