2024-09-10 11:54:25
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that mosquitoes, such as Aedes aegypti, use infrared radiation from body heat to find people they live with. Combined with signals such as CO2 and odor, this infrared energy doubles the search performance, revealing an important new insight into these insects.
A group led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA) has discovered that mosquitoes detect infrared body heat to find people.
During their research, published in the journal ‘Nature’, they found that infrared radiation from a source with a temperature similar to that of human skin doubled the general host-seeking behavior of insects when combined with CO2 and human carbon dioxide.
Mosquitoes are very sensitive to this infrared source while searching for a host. The researchers also discovered where this infrared detector is located and how it works at the morphological and biochemical level.
“The mosquito we studied, ‘Aedes aegypti’, is remarkably adept at finding human hosts. “This work sheds new light on how they do this,” said co-author Nicolas DeBeaubien, a former graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at UCSB in the laboratory of Professor Craig Montell. Rev. Ana Mera, a pharmacist. Barcelona
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