Six legged wallflowers don’t get… POLLINATED?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Imagine speed-dating, but you can’t hear anything. Think you’d make it to first base? Well, we’re not the only ones who wanna hear some smooth talk. Mosquitoes do too. Wait… Can we use that against them?
Enter Yijin Wang and team at U-C Santa Barbara. They listened to female mosquitoes’ wingbeats, hoping to hear romance in the air.
Then they genetically removed a hearing channel, causing the male mosquitoes to ignore females. Even when paired with ten female mosquitoes, males neither mated nor interacted with them.
If we can figure out how to mess with their hearing, we might have a new tool to combat mosquito-borne diseases.
Talk about a real buzzkill!
Reference: Y. Wang, D. Thakur, E. Duge, C. Murphy, I. Girling, N.A. DeBeaubien, J. Chen, B.H. Nguyen, A.S. Gurav, C. Montell, Deafness due to loss of a TRPV channel eliminates mating behavior in Aedes aegypti males, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (47) e2404324121,