Researchers will find mosquito eyesight that suits our skin

The smell of your breath warns them that you are nearby and rejuvenates their eyesight.

Second, a flash of red (skin shade) seduces them closer.

Now a few inches away, the heat and moisture radiated from your body signals them to land — and bite.

It’s a woman with a complicated process Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes pass through to taste your blood, according to Jeff Rifer, a professor of biology at the University of Washington and head of a research group investigating what attracts nasty insects to people.

In a dissertation Published in Nature Communications on FridayRifer’s team examined the eyesight of mosquitoes and found in a series of experiments that insects were attracted to certain colors such as red and orange.

In one experiment, researchers installed a wind tunnel that allowed mosquitoes to fly freely when a series of video cameras recorded all movements.

“When you stimulated them, gave them a small amount of CO2, and there was a red signal, they would have gone to it and were attracted to it,” Riferu said. “These are the same colors reflected from your skin.”

The smell of carbon dioxide-the gas we exhale-causes mosquitoes’ eyesight.

Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes are a public health tragedy that infects diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever, West Nile fever, and Zika fever. By investigating how they live in us, we can develop traps to eradicate these mosquito populations and provide people with new tools to prevent them from being bitten. I can do it.

People are the preferred diet for Aedes aegypti mosquito. These mosquitoes live in tropical, subtropical and temperate climates, Expand its range as the climate warms..women only Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes suck blood from the host. They can start the outbreak by spreading the virus from one person to another.

In previous experiments in Rifer’s lab, Researchers made a cut in the brain of a genetically modified mosquitoGive researchers a microscopic view of their neural processes. Mosquitoes have been modified so that when neurons are activated, their cells glow fluorescent green. Researchers have discovered that carbon dioxide stimulates neural activity in the optical region of the brain.

In other words, the smell of carbon dioxide enhanced their eyesight.

However, little was known about what the world would look like through the eyes of mosquitoes.

“One aspect we’ve been studying for a while is mosquito color vision,” Rifer said.

Wind tunnel experiments suggest that mosquitoes can perceive and distinguish specific wavelengths of visible light that people perceive as color. Mosquitoes were painted orange, red and cyan. They didn’t care about white, green and purple.

Red is at the upper end of the spectrum of visible light and has a longer wavelength.

“Relatively few insects have these receptors that can see these far wavelengths,” Riferu said.

This is important because of how light interacts with human skin.

“Everyone, regardless of your pigmentation or skin tone, reflects a very strong signature on the spectrum of reddish colors,” Rifer said.

Another experiment confirmed this case.

Once again, the mosquito was free to fly in the cage and hit carbon dioxide. This time, I touched the window glass designed to prevent the transmission of body temperature and odor to insects.

Some volunteers pressed their bare hands against the glass. Others did so with white gloves on. Mosquitoes were much more likely to fly towards their bare hands.

Separately, researchers used optical filters to block long wavelengths when the human hand was displayed. After removing the red, the mosquitoes became less attractive.

Rifer said it’s not clear if mosquitoes see colors like humans or have a more basic visual system.

“We are now testing it in terms of whether they have true color vision,” Rifer said. “Can they distinguish between red and orange?”

It remains a mystery why mosquitoes are attracted to cyan. More research is needed, Riferu said. Researchers are also trying to dig deeper into how mosquito brains process color.

Research opens up interesting possibilities.

“Can we make it invisible to mosquitoes? One way to do this might be to block the red bands that are being released from the skin,” Rifer said.