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The first 2–4 days after an Anopheles gambiae female mosquito emerges are critical to her survival and reproductive success. Yet, the order of behavioural events (mating, sugar feeding, blood feeding) during this time has received little attention. We discovered that among female cohorts sampled from emergence, sugar feeding had a higher probability than blood feeding of occurring first, and mating rarely occurred before a meal was taken. The night after emergence, 48% of females fed on sugar in mesocosms, and 25% fed on human blood; in the absence of sugar, 49% of females fed on human blood. After 5 days, 39% of the sugar-supplied females had blood-fed and mated, and were fructose negative, whereas only 8% of the sugar-denied females had both blood-fed and mated by this time. The model that best explained the transitions suggests that females made use of two distinct behavioural pathways, the …