Meeting Abstract
Over 3,500 mosquito species have been described in the family Culicidae, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica. Preferred hosts vary widely across mosquito species from humans and other mammals to reptiles, birds and arthropods. Some species may be specialists or opportunists and some species do not blood-feed at all, including all members of the genus Toxorhynchites. Anthropophilic disease-vector mosquitoes have a significant impact on global ecosystems, epidemiology, and economies by their impact on human health and welfare, yet little is known about why they preferentially feed on humans and certain subpopulations in particular. One factor may be that mosquitoes can learn and remember sensory information such as chemical odors associated with the best (and worst) hosts. This learning and memory has been shown to be heavily modulated by biogenic amines such as dopamine and serotonin. In order to understand why mosquitoes seek to bite their preferred hosts, we compared receptivity to a panel of odors, ability to form associative olfactory memories of these odors, and expression patterns of dopamine and serotonin in olfactory brain centers across the species Aedes aegypti (anthropophilic), Toxorhynchites amboinensis (nectarivorous), and Anopheles stephensi (anthropophilic). Results indicate a heterogeneity of biogenic amine expression in the antennal lobes which may have a relationship with encoding of olfactory memories that are likely involved in host preference behaviors.
