Mosquitoes rely heavily on human-derived chemosensory cues as they search for a blood meal. Understanding how mosquitoes detect and encode human odor would provide a major inroad to prevent mosquito biting behavior and the transmission of diseases that claim more than half a million lives each year. The study of mosquito olfaction also provides an opportunity to address fundamental questions...
Mosquitoes (Culicidae) and biting midges (Ceratopogonidae, genus Culicoides) use carbon dioxide and body odours to find their blood meal host. Skin bacteria play an important role in the production of these body odours, and the human skin microbiota composition correlates with differences in attractiveness to mosquitoes. This opens up the possibility of protecting animals from biting insects...
Biting midges of the genus Culicoides are vectors of veterinary relevance, as they can transmit a range of pathogens, including bluetongue virus and epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus. Novel control options may include push-pull systems to alleviate the impact of insect vectors on their hosts. While some spatial repellents have proven to be valid “push” candidates, we still lack an...
After landing on the skin of a mammalian host, female mosquitoes start probing this tissue for a blood vessel, salivating and moving the mouthparts in a stereotypical way. Intradermal probing must be fast and efficient, being a necessary but hazardous step in mosquitoes' life cycle, as they need to acquire and digest blood to complete egg development.
We have recently characterised the role...
Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes employ remarkably robust, seemingly "unbreakable" host-seeking behavior to detect and bite humans, making them highly effective vectors for dangerous arboviruses including dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. While insect repellents containing DEET and picaridin effectively disrupt this persistent attraction and prevent bites, their precise mechanisms of action...
Aedes aegypti, the primary vector of several arboviruses including those that cause dengue, Zika, and yellow fever, relies heavily on olfactory cues to locate human hosts for blood feeding. The mosquito’s olfactory system is characterized by significant redundancy, with individual olfactory sensory neurons co-expressing multiple receptor types. This redundancy poses both a challenge and an...
Most insects do not provide any direct care for their offspring. Therefore, it is crucial that female insects carefully judge oviposition sites and lay their eggs at places that provide good conditions for their offspring’s survival. To do so, ovipositing insects often evaluate the suitability of an oviposition site based on innate preferences. However, we recently could show that in addition...
