Actually, I have conducted experiments on success of mosquito blood meal acquiring ability, and now want to calculate the vectorial capacity for a specific pathogen that needs exogenous period of that pathogen. How can I determine the exogenous period with a proper equation?
The exogenous period is also called extrinsic incubation period. It is the time spent for an ingested pathogen to develop in the mosquito until it can be transmitted to the vertebrate host. To determine this, you can infect your mosquitoes and dissect them at regular times to check if they contain infectious parasites. For example, if this pathogen is transmitted from the salivary glands of mosquitoes (as malaria parasites), you can dissect the salivary glands and check for the presence of parasites.
I confirm the definition of the extrinsic period given by Mathilde. This is the period between the infecting bloodmeal (infecting the mosquito) and the first infective bloodmeal (infecting the host). Dissection of salivary glands is an easy way but you can also test alive mosquitoes using artificial membranes and check the blood under the membrane after the bloodmeal. But be careful not to mix up vectorial competence and vectorial capacity. Il you check in the lab the ability of a mosquito to infect with a pathogen and to transmit it , you measure the vectorial competence, not the vect capacity. Best wishes, GD
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