text: mosquitoes? my husband says that mosquitoes bite only once.  i'm not buying it.  is this true? no, this is not true.  mosquitoes are primarily nectar feeder with only the females requiring a blood meal to acquire protein prior to laying eggs.  female mosquitoes may feed upon many types of animals including mammals, birds, and reptiles.  as a result, individual mosquitoes often serve as disease vectors, transmitting diseases from one host animal to another such as malaria, filariasis, yellow fever, dengue fever, epidemic polyarthritis, rift valley fever, and west nile virus.  in fact, the organisms that cause these diseases have evolved life cycles that take advantage of this method of transmission.  female members of the genus anopheles can survive as adults up to a month in captive breeding and usually a 1-2 weeks in the wild.  during this time, the adult female repeats a cycle of eating a full blood meals then laying eggs every 2-3 days in tropical climates or over a longer time period in cooler climates.  thus, multiple blood meals and multiple egg laying events.