Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground Mosquitoes are not only a nuisance, but are also respon-sible for the spread of a wide range of diseases including malaria, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus and Rift Valley fever [1-3]. These mosquito borne diseases, infect-ing more than 700 million people around the world each year, result in as many as two million deaths annually [4]. One of these diseases, malaria, is transmitted be-tween humans by adult female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Malaria is endemic in tropical and sub-tropical regions where it causes over 300 million acute illnesses and at least one million deaths each year [5]. In spite of the recent scale-up of control programs, malari...