2024-08-30 13:58:46
A high-pitched sound close to the ear is a sign that a female mosquito is hunting, since they are the ones who drink blood, not the males. The reaction of many may be to try to bite the insect to avoid being eaten, but the sound that represents danger for mosquitoes is the call of love. And their eyes make them long.
An international team of researchers has discovered that when a male mosquito Anopheles coluzziiThe main seller of malaria in Africa, listening to the sound of the wings of women beating, his vision “activated” in a wonderful way to come and go quickly and quickly on his way. The discovery, published in the magazine ‘Current Biology’, It could lead to better malaria control strategies and even help develop the perfect drone flight.
Like many types of mosquitoes, Anopheles coluzzii He said it was not a good vision. But when he heard the woman’s disgust, things changed. The insect has the ability to scan the surrounding environment in search of a potential partner. Even in many people, their hands are full of loving mosquitoes, that is how they love them. A. coluzsiithe male can face fix his target. Then you move faster and move quickly through the swarm, avoiding collisions with others.
“We have discovered an amazingly powerful association in male mosquitoes when they are looking for a mate: they hear the sound of wings vibrating at a specific frequency (the type of chirping that females do) and it will activate the visual system,” said said Saumya. Gupta, a postdoctoral researcher in biology from the University of Washington (UW). “This shows the complex interaction that occurs between the different sensory systems of mosquitoes,” he added.
According to the researchers, this strong link between males listening to the noise of females and moving to an object in their field of view could open a new way for pest control: creating a new generation of traps specific to Anopheles mosquitoes. it spread fever. .
An attractive thing
“This thing is attractive to men that makes them go towards what they think may be the source, whether it is a real woman or maybe a mosquito trap,” he explained. Jeffrey RiffellUW biology professor.
Like most Anopheles species, Anopheles coluzzii They used to work together with big groups in the evening. Most of the insects in these swarms are male, with a few females. To the human eye, swarms can appear chaotic. Mosquitoes of both sexes quickly pass by each other. Men must use their senses to avoid attacks and find women.
A flight simulator used to test individual mosquitoes
Saumya Gupta
Gupta, Riffell and their colleagues – including scientists from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the Health Sciences Research Institute of Burkina Faso and the University of Montpelier in France – wanted to understand the interaction between mosquito senses and how they work together in these swarms. To test the flight behavior of individual male mosquitoes, they built a small circular stage that uses a curved, pixelated screen to simulate the visual chaos of a swarm. The device is essentially a mosquito flight simulator. In it, the mosquito test subject, which is tethered and cannot move freely, can still see, smell and hear, and also stretch its wings as if in flight.
In tests with dozens of mosquitoes Anopheles coluzzii men, the authors discovered that they responded differently to something in their field of vision depending on what the researchers produced. If they play a tone at 450 hertz (as long as the female’s wings beat in these swarms), the males go to the object. But the males did not try to change to the object if the researchers played a tone at 700 hertz, which is close to the frequencies of their male counterparts flapping their wings.
The distance that the mosquito perceives from the object is also important. If the compared object appeared more than three body lengths away, the mosquito did not turn to it, even in the presence of female-like flight sounds.
“The resolving power of the mosquito eye is about 1,000 times less than that of the human eye,” Riffell said. Mosquitoes “shift to use vision for more passive behaviors, such as avoiding other objects and monitoring their position.”
In addition to their striking response to objects when listening to female flight sounds, experiments revealed that men make a different set of subtle flight adjustments to other objects. They adjust the amplitude and frequency of their flapping wings in response to an object in their field of view, even without the flapping sounds emitted by the speaker. The team concluded that eye-stimulating responses may be preparatory exercises to avoid an object. To find out more, they filmed a male-only lab. Analysis of these movements shows that males are faster when they approach another male.
“We believe our results indicate that males use shorter visual distances to avoid collisions within swarms,” Gupta said. “However, listening to female flight vocalizations appears to dramatically change their behavior, suggesting the importance of integrating visual and auditory information.”
mosquito trap
This research may reveal a new approach for mosquito control by examining how mosquitoes integrate auditory and visual signals. The strong attraction and affinity of males to visual cues when they hear a female’s scream may be a weakness that researchers can use when designing the next generation of mosquito traps, especially traps for the Anopheles species, which are predators. importance of malaria pathogens.
“Current measures (against mosquitoes), such as insecticides, have become less effective as mosquitoes develop resistance. We need new approaches, such as baits or traps, that attract mosquitoes,” Riffell stressed.
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