Primacy of Human Odors Over Visual and Heat Cues in Inducing Landing in Female Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes.

ABSTRACT: Although human skin odor is thought to be the cue that anthropophilic mosquitoes use to discriminate us from other potential hosts, the precise details of how they use skin odor to find and land on a human is unclear. We found that Aedes aegypti land on a source of skin odor without a co-located visual cue. By collecting human odor on glass beads and using identical glass beads to visually conceal skin odor and heat cues, we were able to study mosquito landing on skin odor, heat, and visual cues separately. Landing is necessary for blood feeding which is a required behavior for the Aedes aegypti life cycle as well as the behavior responsible for the epidemiological impact of mosquitoes. Therefore, we consider it to be the diagnostic measure of the importance of a host cue. In

SUBMITTER: Sumner BD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9276619 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature