Human scent guides mosquito thermotaxis and host selection under naturalistic conditions.

ABSTRACT: The African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae exhibits a strong innate drive to seek out humans in its sensory environment, classically entering homes to land on human skin in the hours flanking midnight. To gain insight into the role that olfactory cues emanating from the human body play in generating this epidemiologically important behavior, we developed a large-scale multi-choice preference assay in Zambia with infrared motion vision under semi-field conditions. We determined that An. gambiae prefers to land on arrayed visual targets warmed to human skin temperature during the nighttime when they are baited with carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions reflective of a large human over background air, body odor from one human over CO₂, and the scent of one sleeping human ov

SUBMITTER: Giraldo D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10824255 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature