A new study by researchers at the University of Washington in the United States of America indicates that a common species of mosquito flies towards specific colors, such as red, orange, black and cyan, after detecting carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, and ignores other colors such as green, purple, blue, and white.
Published in the British science journal Nature Communications, the study may help explain how mosquitoes find human hosts, as human skin gives off a red-orange color to mosquitoes’ eyes.
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Jeffrey Riffell, a professor of biology at the University of Washington, led this study and explained that “mosquitoes appear to use odors to help them distinguish what is nearby, such as a stinging host”, with “when they smell specific compounds, like the CO2 in our breath, this scent stimulates the eyes to look for specific colors and other visual patterns that are associated with a potential host, and to address them.”
To conclude, the team of researchers analyzed the behavior of female mosquitoes – as they are the only ones that drink blood – that can transmit dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and zika, the Aedes aegypty, and presented different visual and olfactory stimuli. In miniature test chambers, the scientists sprayed specific odors and presented a colored dot and a human hand. In both cases, without any odor stimulus, the mosquitoes ignored the visual point, regardless of its color. With the CO2 smell, the mosquitoes continued to ignore the point when it was green, blue or purple (gloves were used for the human hand), but they did not ignore it when it was red, orange, black or cyan.
Previous research by the same team showed that sniffing CO2 increased the activity level of female mosquitoes. Now, the experiment with the colored dots has shown that, after smelling carbon dioxide, the eyes of these mosquitoes prefer certain wavelengths in the visual spectrum (colors) – which correspond to longer wavelengths of light. Riffel compares the situation with that of an individual who is walking down the street and smells cakes: “This is a sign that there is probably a bakery nearby and that you can start looking for it”, stating that in the In the case of mosquitoes, colors are the “visual elements that mosquitoes look for after sniffing their own version of a bakery”.
Human skin, regardless of pigmentation, emits a long-wavelength signal in the red-orange range. If these are the two colors that mosquitoes look for after sniffing carbon dioxide, it is natural that, when they feel human breath, they look for the skin. The research leader then points out that, in addition to breathing, sweat and skin temperature, “the color red, which can not only be found in clothes, but also in everyone’s skin” is another factor that influences mosquitoes. To avoid their stings, we should “filter these attractive colors on our skin or wear clothes that avoid these colors,” he said.
According to the publication EurekAlert!, this study also led to the conclusion that genes determine the preference of female mosquitoes for the colors red and orange. While mosquitoes with a mutated copy of a gene needed to smell CO2 showed no color preference, another type of mutated mosquitoes, with a change in vision so that they could no longer recognize long wavelengths of light, were more colorblind in the presence of CO2
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