Department of Biology, University of Washington, Box 351800, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Washington, Box 351800, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
J Exp Biol. 2020 Apr 1;223(Pt 7):jeb221218. doi: 10.1242/jeb.221218.
Mosquitoes spread deadly diseases that impact millions of people every year. Understanding mosquito physiology and behavior is vital for public health and disease prevention. However, many important questions remain unanswered in the field of mosquito neuroethology, particularly in our understanding of the larval stage. In this study, we investigate the innate exploration behavior of six different species of disease vector mosquito larvae. We show that these species exhibit strikingly different movement paths, corresponding to a wide range of exploration behaviors. We also investigated the response of each species to an appetitive food cue, aversive cue or neutral control. In contrast to the large differences in exploration behavior, all species appeared to gather near preferred cues through random aggregation rather than directed navigation, and exhibited slower speeds once encountering food patches. Our results identify key behavioral differences among important disease vector species, and suggest that navigation and exploration among even closely related mosquito species may be much more distinct than previously thought.
蚊子传播致命疾病，每年影响数百万人。了解蚊子的生理和行为对于公共卫生和疾病预防至关重要。然而，在蚊子神经行为学领域，仍有许多重要问题尚未得到解答，特别是在幼虫阶段的理解方面。在这项研究中，我们调查了六种不同疾病传播媒介蚊子幼虫的先天探索行为。我们表明，这些物种表现出截然不同的运动路径，对应于广泛的探索行为。我们还研究了每种物种对有吸引力的食物线索、厌恶线索或中性对照的反应。与探索行为的巨大差异形成对比的是，所有物种似乎都通过随机聚集而不是定向导航聚集在偏好的线索附近，并且一旦遇到食物斑块，速度就会减慢。我们的研究结果确定了重要疾病传播媒介物种之间的关键行为差异，并表明即使是密切相关的蚊子物种之间的导航和探索可能比之前认为的更为明显。
