Diurnal and nocturnal mosquitoes escape looming threats using distinct flight strategies

Multisensory integration in Anopheles mosquito swarms: The role of visual and acoustic information in mate tracking and collision avoidance

Male mosquitoes form aerial aggregations, known as swarms, to attract females and maximize their chances of finding a mate. Within these swarms, individuals must be able to recognize potential mates and navigate the dynamic social environment to successfully intercept a mating partner. Prior research has almost exclusively focused on the role of acoustic cues in mediating the male mosquito's ability to recognize and pursue flying females. However, the role of other sensory modalities in this behavior has not been explored. Moreover, how males avoid collisions with one another in the dense swarm while pursuing females remains poorly understood. In this study, we combined free-flight and tethered flight simulator experiments to demonstrate that swarming Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes integrate visual and acoustic information to track conspecifics and avoid collisions. Our tethered experiments revealed that acoustic stimuli gated mosquito steering responses to visual objects simulating nearby mosquitoes, especially in males that exhibited attraction to visual objects in the presence of female flight tones. Additionally, we observed that visual cues alone could trigger changes in mosquitoes' wingbeat amplitude and frequency. These findings were corroborated by our free-flight experiments, which revealed that mosquitoes modulate their flight responses to nearby conspecifics in a similar manner to tethered animals, allowing for collision avoidance within swarms. Together, these results demonstrate that both males and females integrate multiple sensory inputs to mediate swarming behavior, and for males, the change in flight kinematics in response to multimodal cues allows them to simultaneously track females while avoiding collisions.

Animal behavior: Mosquitos ride the wave

Some insects have a frustrating knack for avoiding a swatter. A new study shows that mosquitos not only evade the visual image of the looming threat, they also surf the wave of air the swatter creates.

Mosquitoes escape looming threats by actively flying with the bow wave induced by the attacker

To detect and escape looming threats, night-flying insects must rely on other senses than vision alone. Nocturnal mosquitoes can evade looming objects in the dark, but how they achieve this is still unknown. Here, we show how night-active female malaria mosquitoes escape from rapidly looming objects that simulate defensive actions of blood-hosts. First, we quantified the escape performance of flying mosquitoes from an event-triggered mechanical swatter, showing that mosquitoes use swatter-induced airflow to increase their escape success. Secondly, we used high-speed videography and deep-learning-based tracking to analyze escape flights in detail, showing that mosquitoes use banked turns to evade the threat. By combining escape kinematics data with numerical simulations of attacker-induced airflow and a mechanistic movement model, we unraveled how mosquitoes control these banked evasive maneuvers: they actively steer away from the danger, and then passively travel with the bow wave produced by the attacker. Our results demonstrate that night-flying mosquitoes can detect looming objects when visual cues are minimal, suggesting that they use attacker-induced airflow both to detect the danger and as a fluid medium to move with away from the threat. This shows that escape strategies of flying insects are more complex than previous visually induced escape flight studies suggest. As most insects are of similar or smaller sizes than mosquitoes, comparable escape strategies are expected among millions of flying insect species. The here-observed escape maneuvers are distinct from those of mosquitoes escaping from odor-baited traps, thus providing new insights for the development of novel trapping techniques for integrative vector management.

Evolutionary change in flight-to-light response in urban moths comes with changes in wing morphology

Moths and other insects are attracted by artificial light sources. This flight-to-light behaviour disrupts their general activity focused on finding resources, such as mating partners, and increases predation risk. It thus has substantial fitness costs. In illuminated urban areas, spindle ermine moths Yponomeuta cagnagella were reported to have evolved a reduced flight-to-light response. Yet, the specific mechanism remained unknown, and was hypothesized to involve either changes in visual perception or general flight ability or overall mobility traits. Here, we test whether spindle ermine moths from urban and rural populations-with known differences in flight-to-light responses-differ in flight-related morphological traits. Urban individuals were found to have on average smaller wings than rural moths, which in turn correlated with a lower probability of being attracted to an artificial light source. Our finding supports the reduced mobility hypothesis, which states that reduced mobility in urban areas is associated with specific morphological changes in the flight apparatus.

Sleep: An Essential and Understudied Process in the Biology of Blood-Feeding Arthropods

Understanding the biology of blood-feeding arthropods is critical to managing them as vectors of etiological agents. Circadian rhythms act in the regulation of behavioral and physiological aspects such as blood feeding, immunity, and reproduction. However, the impact of sleep on these processes has been largely ignored in blood-feeding arthropods, but recent studies in mosquitoes show that sleep-like states directly impact host landing and blood feeding. Our focus in this review is on discussing the relationship between sleep and circadian rhythms in blood-feeding arthropods along with how unique aspects such as blood gluttony and dormancy can impact sleep-like states. We highlight that sleep-like states are likely to have profound impacts on vector-host interactions but will vary between lineages even though few direct studies have been conducted. A myriad of factors, such as artificial light, could directly impact the time and levels of sleep in blood-feeding arthropods and their roles as vectors. Lastly, we discuss underlying factors that make sleep studies in blood-feeding arthropods difficult and how these can be bypassed. As sleep is a critical factor in the fitness of animal systems, a lack of focus on sleep in blood-feeding arthropods represents a significant oversight in understanding their behavior and its role in pathogen transmission.

Visual guidance of honeybees approaching a vertical landing surface

Landing is a critical phase for flying animals, whereby many rely on visual cues to perform controlled touchdown. Foraging honeybees rely on regular landings on flowers to collect food crucial for colony survival and reproduction. Here, we explored how honeybees utilize optical expansion cues to regulate approach flight speed when landing on vertical surfaces. Three sensory-motor control models have been proposed for landings of natural flyers. Landing honeybees maintain a constant optical expansion rate set-point, resulting in a gradual decrease in approach velocity and gentile touchdown. Bumblebees exhibit a similar strategy, but they regularly switch to a new constant optical expansion rate set-point. In contrast, landing birds fly at a constant time to contact to achieve faster landings. Here, we re-examined the landing strategy of honeybees by fitting the three models to individual approach flights of honeybees landing on platforms with varying optical expansion cues. Surprisingly, the landing model identified in bumblebees proved to be the most suitable for these honeybees. This reveals that honeybees adjust their optical expansion rate in a stepwise manner. Bees flying at low optical expansion rates tend to increase their set-point stepwise, while those flying at high optical expansion rates tend to decrease it stepwise. This modular landing control system enables honeybees to land rapidly and reliably under a wide range of initial flight conditions and visual landing platform patterns. The remarkable similarity between the landing strategies of honeybees and bumblebees suggests that this may also be prevalent among other flying insects. Furthermore, these findings hold promising potential for bioinspired guidance systems in flying robots.

The evolution of sanguivory in vampire bats: origins and convergences

Blood-feeding (sanguivory) has evolved more than two dozen times among birds, fishes, insects, arachnids, molluscs, crustaceans, and annelids; however, among mammals, it is restricted to the vampire bats. Here, the authors revisit the question of how it evolved in that group. Evidence to date suggests that the ancestors of phyllostomids were insectivorous, and that carnivory, omnivory, and nectarivory evolved among phyllostomids after vampire bats diverged. Frugivory likely also evolved after vampire bats diverged, but the phylogeny is ambiguous on that point. However, vampire bats lack any genetic evidence of a frugivorous past, and the behavioural progression from frugivory to sanguivory is difficult to envision. Thus, the most parsimonious scenario is that sanguivory evolved in an insectivorous ancestor to vampire bats via ectoparasite-eating, wound-feeding, or some combination of the two—all feeding habits found among blood-feeding birds today. Comparing vampire bats with other sanguivores, the authors find several remarkable examples of convergence. Further, it was found that blood-feeding has been ca. 50 times more likely to evolve in a vertebrate lineage than in an invertebrate one. The authors hypothesize that this difference exists because vertebrates are more likely than invertebrates to have the biochemical necessities required to assimilate the components of vertebrate blood.

Visual threats reduce blood-feeding and trigger escape responses in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

The diurnal mosquitoes Aedes aegypti are vectors of several arboviruses, including dengue, yellow fever, and Zika viruses. To find a host to feed on, they rely on the sophisticated integration of olfactory, visual, thermal, and gustatory cues emitted by the hosts. If detected by their target, this latter may display defensive behaviors that mosquitoes need to be able to detect and escape in order to survive. In humans, a typical response is a swat of the hand, which generates both mechanical and visual perturbations aimed at a mosquito. Here, we used programmable visual displays to generate expanding objects sharing characteristics with the visual component of an approaching hand and quantified the behavioral response of female mosquitoes. Results show that Ae. aegypti is capable of using visual information to decide whether to feed on an artificial host mimic. Stimulations delivered in a LED flight arena further reveal that landed Ae. aegypti females display a stereotypical escape strategy by taking off at an angle that is a function of the direction of stimulus introduction. Altogether, this study demonstrates that mosquitoes landed on a host mimic can use isolated visual cues to detect and avoid a potential threat.

Anopheles gambiae Trehalase Inhibitors for Malaria Vector Control: A Molecular Docking and Molecular Dynamics Study

Trehalase inhibitors are considered safe alternatives for insecticides and fungicides. However, there are no studies testing these compounds on Anopheles gambiae, a major vector of human malaria. This study predicted the three-dimensional structure of Anopheles gambiae trehalase (AgTre) and identified potential inhibitors using molecular docking and molecular dynamics methods. Robetta server, C-I-TASSER, and I-TASSER were used to predict the protein structure, while the structural assessment was carried out using SWISS-MODEL, ERRAT, and VERIFY3D. Molecular docking and screening of 3022 compounds was carried out using AutoDock Vina in PyRx, and MD simulation was carried out using NAMD. The Robetta model outperformed all other models and was used for docking and simulation studies. After a post-screening analysis and ADMET studies, uniflorine, 67837201, 10406567, and Compound 2 were considered the best hits with binding energies of -6.9, -8.9, -9, and -8.4 kcal/mol, respectively, better than validamycin A standard (-5.4 kcal/mol). These four compounds were predicted to have no eco-toxicity, Brenk, or PAINS alerts. Similarly, they were predicted to be non-mutagenic, carcinogenic, or hepatoxic. 67837201, 10406567, and Compound 2 showed excellent stability during simulation. The study highlights uniflorine, 67837201, 10406567, and Compound 2 as good inhibitors of AgTre and possible compounds for malaria vector control.

Carbon dioxide and blood-feeding shift visual cue tracking during navigation in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

Haematophagous mosquitoes need a blood meal to complete their reproductive cycle. To accomplish this, female mosquitoes seek vertebrate hosts, land on them and bite. As their eggs mature, they shift attention away from hosts and towards finding sites to lay eggs. We asked whether females were more tuned to visual cues when a host-related signal, carbon dioxide, was present, and further examined the effect of a blood meal, which shifts behaviour to ovipositing. Using a custom, tethered-flight arena that records wing stroke changes while displaying visual cues, we found the presence of carbon dioxide enhances visual attention towards discrete stimuli and improves contrast sensitivity for host-seeking Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Conversely, intake of a blood meal reverses vertical bar tracking, a stimulus that non-fed females readily follow. This switch in behaviour suggests that having a blood meal modulates visual attention in mosquitoes, a phenomenon that has been described before in olfaction but not in visually driven behaviours.

Mosquito flight: Escaping attacks in dim light

To avoid fast attackers, animals must move somewhere their pursuer cannot follow or does not expect. A new study shows that female mosquitoes of either a diurnal or a nocturnal species each exhibit a distinct escape strategy matched to the light level they experience as they hunt for blood.