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Mosquito lovers “sing” in harmony
Dec. 31, 2009
Courtesy Cell Press
and World Science staff
The mosquitoes responsible for
most malaria deaths find mates by using their wingbeats to produce tones that harmonize with
those of their partners, a study has found. An Anopheles gambiae
mosquito. (Image courtesy WHO
The insect lovers can’t find each other without “singing” in perfect harmony, according to the report, published online Dec. 31 in the research journal
Current Biology.
“Everyone must be familiar with the maddening whine a mosquito makes as it hones in for a bite,” said Gabriella Gibson of the University of Greenwich at Medway in the U.K.,
an author of the report.
“Many of us have wondered why it makes its presence so obvious,” she added, but it’s probably because the advantages in terms of mate attraction outweigh “the risk of being squashed by the rare host that is still awake at feeding time.”
The main malaria-transmitting mosquitos form a group known as
Anopheles gambiae. Although its members look essentially
identical, they actually comprise seven species and several forms of chromosomes sets, Gibson added, a diversity that gives the insects a remarkable adaptability.
The new findings help to explain how each species avoids mating with members of other species, the researchers said. This occurs even as some mosquito groups, including the “M” and “S” forms found in Burkina Faso that were the subject of the new study, travel together in the same swarms.
Gibson and colleagues found that male and female mosquitoes harmonize with each other. Gibson said that this is analogous to two partially deaf singers—one alto and the other soprano—who can hear low tones, but perhaps not their own or each other’s songs. Instead, they listen to the dissonance if one or the other goes a bit sharp or flat, which they can get rid of by adjusting their respective tones until the dissonance diminishes to nothing.
“They can do this even if they each sing a different note, say a ‘middle C’ and a ‘G’ four tones higher,” said co-author Ian Russell of the University of Sussex, U.K. “By listening and subtly altering their pitch to minimize the dissonance, they achieve their goal of ‘singing’ in a perfect harmony that we, but not they, can hear.”
The researchers found that two mosquitoes don’t harmonize successfully if they are of the same sex or if they are not the same type of mosquito. They might try for a while, Gibson explained, but they
eventually give up.
“Even the most ‘lowly creatures,’ such as mosquitoes, have highly evolved neurosensory systems,” noted Gibson. These enable them to distinguish “other types of mosquito that are so closely related we need to analyze their DNA to tell them apart.”
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The mosquitoes responsible for the vast majority of malaria deaths find mates by using their wingbeats to produce tones that harmonize with their partners’, a study has found. The insect lovers can’t find each other without “singing” in perfect harmony, according to the report, published online Dec. 31 in the research journal Current Biology. “Everyone must be familiar with the maddening whine a mosquito makes as it hones in for a bite,” said Gabriella Gibson of the University of Greenwich at Medway in the U.K. “Many of us have wondered why it makes its presence so obvious,” she added, but it’s probably because the advantages in terms of mate attraction outweigh “the risk of being squashed by the rare host that is still awake at feeding time.” The predominant malaria-transmitting mosquitos form a group known as Anopheles gambiae. Although members of this group look essentially the same, they actually comprise seven species and several forms of chromosomes sets, Gibson added, a diversity that gives the insects a remarkable adaptability. The new findings help to explain how each species avoids mating with members of other species, the researchers said. This occurs even as some mosquito groups, including the “M” and “S” forms found in Burkina Faso that were the subject of the new study, travel together in the same swarms. Gibson and colleagues found that male and female mosquitoes harmonize with each other. Gibson said that this is analogous to two partially deaf singers—one alto and the other soprano—who can hear low tones, but perhaps not their own or each other’s songs. Instead, they listen to the dissonance if one or the other goes a bit sharp or flat, which they can get rid of by adjusting their respective tones until the dissonance diminishes to nothing. “They can do this even if they each sing a different note, say a ‘middle C’ and a ‘G’ four tones higher,” said co-author Ian Russell of the University of Sussex, U.K. “By listening and subtly altering their pitch to minimize the dissonance, they achieve their goal of ‘singing’ in a perfect harmony that we, but not they, can hear.” The researchers found that two mosquitoes don’t harmonize successfully if they are of the same sex or if they are not the same type of mosquito. They might try for a while, Gibson explained, but they never find that harmony and eventually give up trying. “Even the most ‘lowly creatures,’ such as mosquitoes, have highly evolved neurosensory systems,” noted Gibson. These enable them to distinguish “other types of mosquito that are so closely related we need to analyze their DNA to tell them apart.”