Swarm Behaviour

Acoustic guided behaviour in Anopheles mosquitoes

Many species of mosquitoes mate in swarms that occur around sunset (and sunrise) where male mosquitoes will gather at a specific location guided by local cues. Females then enter the swarm and males give chase, identifying the potential female partner by the frequency of her beating wings. Male and female mosquitoes have significantly different wing beat frequencies (WBF), with the former typically having much higher WBF than the latter Loh & Su et. al.

In this video we can see the response of the male mosquito swarm when a pure female tone is presented to them.

The males demonstrate a clear attraction to the source of this female tone but there is also a perceptible tone shift of the males wing beat frequency (WBF)

Behavioural setup

Analysis pipeline

Shiny interface

Results & Conclusions

Fieldwork

As apart of this project I also got to spend some time chasing mosquitoes in the Kilombero district of Tanzania at the Ifakara Health Institute