Experiment 2: pure glyphosate and food limitation
The purpose of the second experiment was to evaluate the impact of larval exposure to glyphosate associated to a nutritional stress on mosquito life history traits and susceptibility to malaria parasite infection. For this purpose, larvae, reared in a 0.05 mg/L glyphosate solution, were either daily fed with 0.5 mg (standard colony maintenance diet) or with 0.25 mg of food (nutritional stress). The specific food treatments were chosen based on a pilot study, with the goal of generating a nutritional stress that did not significantly impact larval survival rate. One day old mosquito larvae were randomly assigned to four experimental groups (160 larvae/ per group): (1) glyphosate exposure and standard diet, (2) glyphosate exposure and nutritional stress, (3) unexposed to glyphosate and standard diet and (4) unexposed to glyphosate and nutritional stress. Glyphosate solution was prepared as described above with solid glyphosate (96% purity; provided by Sigma-Aldrich, Switzeralnd).