Mosquitoes are Attracted to Specific Colors, New Study Shows
bart9h writes:
The article at sci-news.com says:
Mosquitoes track odors, locate hosts, and find mates visually. The color of a food resource, such as a flower or warm-blooded host, can be dominated by long wavelengths of the visible light spectrum (green to red for humans) and is likely important for object recognition and localization. However, little is known about the hues that attract mosquitoes or how odor affects mosquito visual search behaviors. A new University of Washington-led study shows that after detecting a telltale gas that we exhale, yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) fly toward specific colors, including red, orange, black and cyan, but they ignore other colors, such as green, purple, blue and white.
"Mosquitoes appear to use odors to help them distinguish what is nearby, like a host to bite," said Professor Jeffrey Riffell, a researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington.
"When they smell specific compounds, like carbon dioxide from our breath, that scent stimulates the eyes to scan for specific colors and other visual patterns, which are associated with a potential host, and head to them."
In the new experiments, Professor Riffell and his colleagues tracked behavior of female Aedes aegypti, when presented with different types of visual and scent cues.
Like all mosquito species, only females drink blood, and bites from Aedes aegypti can transmit dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika.
Journal Reference:
Alonso San Alberto, Diego, Rusch, Claire, Zhan, Yinpeng, et al. The olfactory gating of visual preferences to human skin and visible spectra in mosquitoes [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28195-x)
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