Monitoring biodiversity and detection of diverse vertebrate species with mosquito blood meal analysis at the DeLuca Preserve, Florida, USA

Biodiversity monitoring is essential to conservation, yet field surveys are expensive, labor-intensive, and require substantial taxonomic expertise. DNA-based approaches are increasingly implemented to indirectly detect the presence of species at diverse types of field sites. In terrestrial ecosystems, invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) has potential to contribute to monitoring efforts that aim to characterize the diversity of vertebrate communities or to detect the presence of vertebrate species. We investigated the feasibility of using mosquito blood meals to detect vertebrate animals, focusing on the diversity of species detected by mosquitoes collectively and by individual species. Mosquitoes were collected at the DeLuca Preserve, Osceola County, Florida, USA over an eight-month period using sampling methods known to be effective for blood-fed mosquitoes. Blood-fed mosquitoes were identified and screened for host DNA using DNA barcoding-based blood meal analysis. From a sample of 2,051 identified blood meals, representing 21 mosquito species, mosquitoes collectively detected 86 vertebrate species. This assemblage of vertebrates was taxonomically diverse with species from all four terrestrial vertebrate classes, 22 orders, including large- and small-bodied species, and species that are nocturnal, diurnal, migratory, resident, fossorial, arboreal, and semiaquatic, and those that are imperiled, invasive, and cryptic. The host detection efficiency, a measure of the number of detected vertebrate species relative to the number of identified blood meals, varied among mosquito species, indicating that species do not contribute equally to detecting vertebrate species within a community. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of mosquito-based iDNA as a detection method for vertebrates, capable of detecting diverse vertebrate species with a single sampling technique. Because of variation in mosquito diversity patterns between geographic sites and habitats, and in the host associations and host detection efficiency among mosquito species, preliminary surveys to identify and target mosquito species appropriate to the goals of the monitoring effort would be expected to optimize return on investment in mosquito-based vertebrate surveys.