U.S. research team: Carbon dioxide or help mosquitoes "lock" you in

, July 19 (Xinhua Zhou Zhou) U.S. scientific research team found that mosquitoes through the "smell first, look" way to find, track and find "food." In this process, carbon dioxide is an important signal for mosquitoes to find their targets. Studies have solved the mystery of how mosquitoes forage at the neuroscience level.
's study, published in the new issue of the American Journal of Current Biology, shows that when a mosquito's olfactory system detects signals such as carbon dioxide, it triggers changes inside the brain that trigger behavioral responses: activating the visual system, "scanning" objects of a specific shape around them and flying toward them.
researchers used tungsten wire to tie about 250 female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to a ring about 18 cm in diameter, with optical sensors under the mosquitoes to observe how often the mosquito's wings flap, and a 360-degree LCD screen around them to play different images that stimulate mosquito vision.
researchers sprayed air with a 5% carbon dioxide content (4.5% of the air exhaled by a person) from an air incoming air in one second. The results showed that the frequency of mosquito wing flapping accelerated. The researchers found that playing images of fast-moving stars on the display had little effect on mosquito behavior, but playing horizontally moving strips, which fanned their wings more frequently and tried to move in the direction of the long strips.
the researchers repeated
the experiment using specific mosquitoes. When these
contain large amounts of calcium ions in their cells, they glow fluorescent green. They removed the mosquitoes' skulls and used a microscope to observe neuron activity in various parts of their brains in real time.The
team focused on 59 visually relevant brain regions of mosquitoes, and found that two-thirds of the visually-related brain regions were lit when they saw the moving strips, while 23 percent of the brain regions were more active than before, suggesting that carbon dioxide triggered a greater response.
' sense of smell can detect signals up to 30 meters away, but they can only see objects about 5 meters away from themselves, said Jeffrey Riefer, a professor of biology at the University of Washington and author of the study.
team's next step will be to test other visual signals that may affect mosquito behavior, and the findings will shed further light on how mosquitoes find food and hopefully provide a scientific basis for reducing mosquito-borne diseases.