Cargando…

Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby

BACKGROUND: The immediate aim of our study was to analyse the behaviour of the malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii (An. gambiae species complex) near a human host with the ultimate aim of contributing to our fundamental understanding of mosquito host-seeking behaviour and the overall aim of identif...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hawkes, Frances, Gibson, Gabriella
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4893241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27260254
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-016-1609-z
_version_ 1782435518133305344
author Hawkes, Frances
Gibson, Gabriella
author_facet Hawkes, Frances
Gibson, Gabriella
author_sort Hawkes, Frances
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The immediate aim of our study was to analyse the behaviour of the malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii (An. gambiae species complex) near a human host with the ultimate aim of contributing to our fundamental understanding of mosquito host-seeking behaviour and the overall aim of identifying behaviours that could be exploited to enhance sampling and control strategies. RESULTS: Based on 3D video recordings of individual host-seeking females in a laboratory wind-tunnel, we found that despite being a nocturnal species, An. coluzzii is highly responsive to a visually conspicuous object, but only in the presence of host-odour. Female mosquitoes approached and abruptly veered away from a dark object, which suggests attraction to visual cues plays a role in bringing mosquitoes to the source of host odour. It is worth noting that the majority of our recorded flight tracks consisted of highly stereotyped ‘dipping’ sequences near the ground, which have been mentioned in the literature, but never before quantified. CONCLUSIONS: Our quantitative analysis of female mosquito flight patterns within ~1.5 m of a host has revealed highly relevant information about responsiveness to visual objects and flight height that could revolutionise the efficacy of sampling traps; the capturing device of a trap should be visually conspicuous and positioned near the ground where the density of host-seeking mosquitoes would be greatest. These characteristics are not universally present in current traps for malarial mosquitoes. The characterisation of a new type of flight pattern that is prevalent in mosquitoes suggests that there is still much that is not fully understood about mosquito flight behaviour. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1609-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4893241
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-48932412016-06-05 Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby Hawkes, Frances Gibson, Gabriella Parasit Vectors Research BACKGROUND: The immediate aim of our study was to analyse the behaviour of the malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii (An. gambiae species complex) near a human host with the ultimate aim of contributing to our fundamental understanding of mosquito host-seeking behaviour and the overall aim of identifying behaviours that could be exploited to enhance sampling and control strategies. RESULTS: Based on 3D video recordings of individual host-seeking females in a laboratory wind-tunnel, we found that despite being a nocturnal species, An. coluzzii is highly responsive to a visually conspicuous object, but only in the presence of host-odour. Female mosquitoes approached and abruptly veered away from a dark object, which suggests attraction to visual cues plays a role in bringing mosquitoes to the source of host odour. It is worth noting that the majority of our recorded flight tracks consisted of highly stereotyped ‘dipping’ sequences near the ground, which have been mentioned in the literature, but never before quantified. CONCLUSIONS: Our quantitative analysis of female mosquito flight patterns within ~1.5 m of a host has revealed highly relevant information about responsiveness to visual objects and flight height that could revolutionise the efficacy of sampling traps; the capturing device of a trap should be visually conspicuous and positioned near the ground where the density of host-seeking mosquitoes would be greatest. These characteristics are not universally present in current traps for malarial mosquitoes. The characterisation of a new type of flight pattern that is prevalent in mosquitoes suggests that there is still much that is not fully understood about mosquito flight behaviour. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1609-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-06-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4893241/ /pubmed/27260254 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-016-1609-z Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Hawkes, Frances
Gibson, Gabriella
Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
title Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
title_full Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
title_fullStr Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
title_full_unstemmed Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
title_short Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
title_sort seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4893241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27260254
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-016-1609-z
work_keys_str_mv AT hawkesfrances seeingisbelievingthenocturnalmalarialmosquitoanophelescoluzziirespondstovisualhostcueswhenodourindicatesahostisnearby
AT gibsongabriella seeingisbelievingthenocturnalmalarialmosquitoanophelescoluzziirespondstovisualhostcueswhenodourindicatesahostisnearby