Mosquitoes looking for love adjust the sound of their whine to woo partners, researchers report.
Male and female mosquitoes both have distinctive flight tones, which they make be beating their wings at different speeds. Whereas female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes beat at 400 Hz, males beat at 600 Hz. Surprisingly, Ronald Roy of Cornell University in Ithaca and his colleagues now report in Science that love struck males and females increase their wing beat frequency to a 1,200 Hz — a shared harmonic (or multiple) — when they are brought near one another.
Because mosquitoes normally zip around, unusual measures were taken for the study, Hoy told NPR.
First, the insects were anesthetized. “You make them a little bit chilly,” Hoy says, “then they don’t fly or walk around.” Next, he and his colleagues applied a small amount of superglue to the backs of the test mosquitoes, then affixed them to a tiny tether and suspended them in the air.
Once the mosquitoes began to beat their wings and produce their gender-specific flight tones, the scientists moved the insects close to each other.
The authors also found that mosquitoes’ Johnston’s organs — their equivalent of ears — are sensitive up to 2,000 Hz. These findings challenge previous conceptions that mosquitoes can’t hear anything above 800 Hz, and might even be deaf.
If you’re curious, the pesky singing insects sound like this. Be warned, it is every bit as unpleasant as you would expect mosquito music to be, and it may make you reach for a fly swatter.
These findings may also have implications for the treatment of dengue fever, which is spread by A. aegypti, the authors propose in a press release.
Efforts are underway to develop and release transgenic or sterilized mosquitoes into the wild, which could reduce the overall size of mosquito populations. But female mosquitoes are excellent at detecting and denying altered males. If harmonization is the key to love, then perhaps sexy singing transgenic males may do the trick.
Work is also underway to control A. aegytpi by infecting them with bacteria.
Image: James Gathany / CDC