The second factor that rendered the Italian south far more malarial than the Germanic north was the efficiency of Italy’s resident mosquito vectors. In most of Germany, the primary malaria vector was Anopheles atroparvus. Luckily for the Germans and other northern Europeans, A. atroparvus is usually zoophilic in its feeding habits, preferring animal over human meals when available. This makes A. atroparvus a poor malaria vector, since a mosquito must bite a human twice to convey the parasite: once to ingest the malaria parasites, and once again after 7-30 days (depending on temperature) to inject the fully developed sporozoites into a new host. As malaria expert L. W. Hackett explained, this disinclination to bite man means that “if 1 in 20