2024-08-30 14:29:29
Blood-sucking mosquitoes are experts at locating people. Researchers have now found another mechanism by which the insects manage to do this.
Mosquitoes find their victims in various ways, such as through body odor and the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air we breathe. Now researchers at the University of California in the USA have discovered that mosquitoes can also track down people using the infrared radiation from body heat.
This discovery could help develop new methods to combat mosquitoes. The study was published in the journal “Nature”.
The international research team has shown that mosquitoes have special infrared sensors in their antennae that allow them to detect the radiation emitted by human skin. For the study, the researchers placed female mosquitoes of the species Aedes aegypti in a box with two zones: on both sides they were exposed to human odors and the CO2 concentration of exhaled air. But only on one side did they also install an infrared source with skin temperature.
The result: twice as many mosquitoes were active at the heat source. This could also explain why the insects prefer to search for prey at dusk, when our bodies are warmer than the environment.
However, mosquitoes do not react to infrared radiation alone, but only in combination with other human traces. According to current research, this includes not only the CO2 in the air we breathe and the smell (sweat), but also the bacteria on the skin and the color of clothing.
The researchers emphasize the relevance of their discovery for health: “Despite their small size, mosquitoes are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal,” says co-author Nicolas DeBeaubien and researcher at the University of California. The mosquito species studied, Aedes aegypti, can transmit diseases such as yellow fever and dengue fever. However, the researchers suspect that their results can also be applied to other mosquitoes. The discovery could therefore help to better regulate mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit in the future.
“Our research improves the understanding of how mosquitoes attack humans and offers new opportunities to control the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases,” says DeBeaubien. For example, more effective mosquito traps could be developed that emit infrared radiation in the energy range of our skin temperature to distract the insects.