Page 02 1. Malaria is caused by unicellular parasites in the genus Plasmodium. Figure 1 shows the life cycle of the parasite with respect to its human and mosquito hosts. Figure 1 Asexual stage in human Sexual stage in female mosquito Plasmodium life cycle Malaria is a well-researched tropical disease of humans, but less is known about the effects of the parasite on its mosquito vector. The parasite Plasmodium relictum causes malaria in birds. A recent study has been carried out to investigate the effects of this parasite on the mosquito Culex pipiens. In particular, two aspects were investigated: fecundity (number of eggs laid) and longevity (measured as survival after egg laying) of the mosquitoes. In Figure 2, box-and-whisker plots show the total egg production by large numbers of uninfected and infected female mosquitoes. Figure 2 250 200 150 100 50 0 Uninfected Infected Female mosquitoes Maximum – highest value Upper quartile – 25% of data higher than this value Median – middle point of dataset. 50% of data higher than this value Lower quartile – 25% of data lower than this value Minimum – lowest value number of eggs laid per female