In a scientific report published last week, scientists helped pinpoint the different chemicals in body odor that attract mosquitoes by building an ice-rink size testing arena and pumping in the scents of different people.
In a scientific report published Friday, scientists helped pinpoint the different chemicals in body odor that attract these insects by building an ice-rink size testing arena and pumping in the scents of different people.
Malaria is a blood-borne disease caused by microscopic parasites that take up residence in red blood cells. When a mosquito bites a person infected with malaria, it sucks up the parasite along with the blood. After developing in the mosquito's stomach, the parasite "will migrate to the salivary glands and then be spat back out into the skin of another human host when the mosquito blood-feeds again," said Dr.
McMeniman, along with Bloomberg postdoctoral researchers and the study's first authors, Drs. Diego Giraldo and Stephanie Rankin-Turner, focused on Anopheles gambiae, a species of mosquito found in sub-Saharan Africa. They partnered with Zambia's"We were really motivated to try and develop a system where we could study the behavior of the African malaria mosquito in a naturalistic habitat, reflective of its native home in Africa," McMeniman said.
Hundreds of mosquitoes in the main 20-by-20-meter facility were then treated to a buffet of the sleeping subjects' scents. Infrared cameras tracked the mosquitoes' movement to the different samples. While carboxylic acids attracted the mosquitoes, the insects seemed to be deterred by another chemical called eucalyptol, which is present in plants. The researchers suspected that one sample with a high eucalyptol concentration might have been related to the diet of one of the participants.
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