2023-06-22 14:24:56
What makes one person attractive to mosquitoes and not another? Nijmegen scientists are going to investigate this at Lowlands. And no, test subjects do not really have to let themselves be bitten by the critters.
It’s a recurring puzzle in relationships: why does one always get bitten by mosquitoes and the other doesn’t? Does one of the two have sweet blood or something like that?
‘That’s a myth,’ says mosquito expert Felix Hol. “We hypothesize that mosquito preference has to do with the smell of your sweat rather than the taste of your blood.”
Thousands of mosquitoes
You would think that scientists already know the answer to the age-old mosquito question, but that is not the case. That is why researchers, including biophysicist Hol, will drive thousands of live mosquitoes to the Lowlands festival in Biddinghuizen in August to test which people are and are not attractive to the stinging insects.
‘We look at whom the mosquitoes are preparing to bite’
The mosquitoes are in cages and are therefore not released on the festival grounds (as some people on Twitter indignantly assumed, but more on that later). They don’t actually bite anyone either. Hol: ‘We designed the cages ourselves. Test subjects can put their arm along a kind of net that the mosquitoes cannot pass through. Mosquitoes smell people. We see if they sit on the edge of the net when the arm is near and if they are getting ready to bite.’
Lowlands Science in 2019. Photo: Jeroen Roest
Cameras record the actions of the mosquitoes. At the same time, the researchers have their test subjects complete a questionnaire. Have they bathed recently? Soap used or not? What did they eat? Taking drugs? Alcohol? And had sex?
‘We also stroke the arm with a cotton swab to see which substances someone has on their skin. From that we try to deduce which bacteria mosquitoes find attractive and which don’t.’
Festival research
Scientists are conducting research at Lowlands for the seventh year in a row. The advantage of working at a festival is that you immediately have a large group of test subjects at hand. In Nijmegen, Hol also conducts mosquito research in the laboratory. ‘We offer the mosquitoes controlled substances that are often found in sweat,’ he says. “And then see what drives them wild.” The scientists can draw more conclusions from the mass of data that will hopefully be returned from Biddinghuizen.
‘The animals we use are not genetically modified’
The news report from Radboudumc about the mosquito study led to a lot of reactions on social media last weekend. Several commenters were convinced that these were genetically modified mosquitoes that would be released uncontrolled on the crowd. Bill Gates would also be behind it, with or without a secret mission. The link with a possible new (planned) pandemic was quickly established.
Researcher Felix Hol did not immediately see this commotion coming, but would like to dispel the suspicions. ‘The mosquitoes remain in their cages throughout the study. The animals we use are not genetically modified – none of our mosquitoes for that matter. We work with ordinary mosquitoes.’
malaria, zika in dengue
Incidentally, these are tropical mosquitoes that are used for the Lowlands research, not Dutch mosquitoes. Because mosquitoes that transmit diseases such as malaria, Zika and dengue worldwide are usually also of the tropical species. And the study is aimed at finding out who is susceptible to a mosquito bite so that people can better arm themselves against it. ‘If we know what triggers mosquitoes, we can anticipate this by developing a better insect repellent, for example,’ says Hol.
He hopes that at least three hundred test subjects will want to participate in the experiment at Lowlands. A scoreboard keeps track of which participant was most attractive to the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes then simply go back to Nijmegen.
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