Data from: Adaptive periodicity in the infectivity of malaria gametocytes to mosquitoes

Daily rhythms in behaviour, physiology, and molecular processes are
expected to enable organisms to appropriately schedule activities
according to consequences of the daily rotation of the Earth. For
parasites, this includes capitalizing on periodicity in transmission
opportunities and for hosts/vectors, this may select for rhythms in immune
defence. We examine rhythms in the density and infectivity of transmission
forms (gametocytes) of rodent malaria parasites in the host’s blood,
parasite development inside mosquito vectors, and potential for onwards
transmission. Furthermore, we simultaneously test whether mosquitoes
exhibit rhythms in susceptibility. We reveal that at night, gametocytes
are twice as infective, despite being less numerous in the blood. Enhanced
infectiousness at night interacts with mosquito rhythms to increase
sporozoite burdens four-fold when mosquitoes feed during their rest phase.
Thus, changes in mosquito biting time (due to bed nets) may render
gametocytes less infective, but this is compensated for by the greater
mosquito susceptibility.