The mosquito gut microbiome and Plasmodium development: a scoping review of molecular approaches and implications for...

Malaria remains a major health burden, with an estimated 282 million cases and approximately 610,000 deaths recorded in 2024. The increasing prevalence of insecticide-resistant Anopheles vectors and drug-resistant Plasmodium strains has substantially eroded the efficacy of conventional control strategies, underscoring the critical need for innovative approaches. Accumulating evidence suggest that the mosquito midgut microbiome exerts a significant influence on Plasmodium sporogonic development; however, no scoping investigation has fully mapped the metagenomic evidence base in this field.

Adhering to the Arksey and O'Malley framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, a systematic search was conducted across PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science for publications from January 2000 to April 2026. Studies that used microbiological, molecular, or metagenomic techniques to study the gut microbiota of mosquito species related to Plasmodium were included. Descriptive mapping was used to synthesize the data in a thematic manner.

Thirteen primary studies met the inclusion criteria, comprising both observational field surveys and experimental infection studies. Four themes emerged: (1) gut microbiota diversity and composition are associated with Plasmodium infection status, though the direction varies by mosquito species, geography, and season; (2) several taxa, including Burkholderia, Asaia, Sphingomonas, Pseudomonas, and Serratia, are consistently associated with reduced infection or are experimentally inhibitory; (3) the Enterobacteriaceae and Serratia spp. show context-dependent, bidirectional relationships with Plasmodium that are best explained by strain-level variation; and (4) a smaller set of taxa, including Elizabethkingia, Chryseobacterium, Methylobacterium, and Pantoea, is positively associated with infection, on observational evidence only. The evidence relied predominantly on 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, with a minority of studies adding whole-genome sequencing, transcriptomics, or metabolomics; none used shotgun metagenomics.

The mosquito gut microbiome exerts a net inhibitory effect on Plasmodium development, with translational potential for microbiome-based vector control, including paratransgenesis. However, the microbiota is not uniformly antagonistic to the parasite, and taxa positively associated with infection remain observational. The field is limited by a near-exclusive reliance on 16S rRNA profiling, few functional and longitudinal studies, and geographically narrow evidence. Multi-omics approaches, longitudinal designs, and broader geographic coverage will be essential to translate these associations into sustainable malaria control.