•Malaria vectors use unknown physiological adaptations to survive arid habitats.•We review the physiology of dormancy and aridity-tolerance, emphasizing mosquitoes.•Sahelian anophelines may aestivate, with short bouts of activity to gain resources.•This form of aestivation extends survival by depressing movement and reproduction.•Further studies on aestivation physiology could yield novel vector control methods. The dry-season biology of malaria vectors is poorly understood, especially in arid environments when no surface waters are available for several months, such as during the dry season in the Sahel. Here we reappraise results on the dry-season physiology of members of the Anopheles gambiae s.l. complex in the broad context of dormancy in insects and especially in mosquitoes. We examine evidence on seasonal changes in reproduction, metabolism, stress tolerance, nutrition, molecular regulation, and environmental conditions and determine if the current results are compatible with dry-season diapause (aestivation) as the primary strategy for persistence throughout the dry season in the Sahel. In the process, we point out critical gaps in our knowledge that future studies can fill. We find compelling evidence that members of the An. gambiae s.l. complex undergo a form of aestivation during the Sahelian dry season by shifting energetic resources away from reproduction and towards increased longevity. Considering the differences between winter at temperate latitudes, which entails immobility of the insect and hence reliance on physiological solutions, as opposed to the Sahelian dry season, which restricts reproduction exclusively, we propose that behavioral changes play an important role in complementing physiological changes in this strategy.