Mosquitoes began biting humans more than a million years ago

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A DNA analysis traced the history of mosquitoes’ initial human bites A close look at mosquito DNA reveals when the insects switched from biting nonhuman primates to our early human ancestors. Mosquitoes have been biting people for more than a million years and probably much longer. An analysis of 38 modern mosquitoes’ DNA suggests an ancestral mosquito species developed a preference for feeding on early humans between 2.9 and 1.6 million years ago, researchers write February 26 in Scientific Reports. The team studied 11 mosquito species from the Anopheles leucosphyrus group, chosen because they gave a good overview of the entire group’s genetics. Some species were “anthropophilic” mosquitoes — human feeders — including Anopheles dirus and Anopheles baimaii, both of which spread malaria, while others fed only on nonhuman primates (mostly monkeys) or on both. The team used the genetic data to reconstruct the insects’ evolutionary history from the mutation rates in their genes. That let the researchers estimate when mosquitoes first bit
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