Mosquito transgenics and courtship songs
Mosquito transgenics and courtship songs
Tags: Gene editing, Genetically modified mosquitoes, Population suppressionH. Hurd, BugBitten BMC, 2020.
Mosquito courtship and mating is an aerial affair. Male mosquitoes gather in large swarms, swirling around and attracting females by the pheromones they emit. But smell is not the only sense involved in courtship, sound is also used. As a female flies into the swarm she is detected by the sound of her wing beat and males identify females by a phonotactic response to the specific sound frequency produced by her wing beat. A male and female will then attune to each other by altering the frequency of their wingbeats in a form of reciprocal tuning that is highly specific.
