- May 15, 2015
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Mosquitoes are a lot more sophisticated at finding you than you probably realized as shown by the following graphic.
So initially, they follow the CO2 trail. If they lose that, they zigzag until they pick it up again. Once they get close enough, they can track visually if they lose the plume. Once they are about a foot away, they can focus on volatile organic compounds leaving your skin or on your heat signature. Once they have enough information, they land and start poking.
The full article is here but most of it will be behind the paywall. Here is an excerpt.
So initially, they follow the CO2 trail. If they lose that, they zigzag until they pick it up again. Once they get close enough, they can track visually if they lose the plume. Once they are about a foot away, they can focus on volatile organic compounds leaving your skin or on your heat signature. Once they have enough information, they land and start poking.
The full article is here but most of it will be behind the paywall. Here is an excerpt.
Biologists have known that mosquitoes follow plumes of carbon dioxide wafting away from a breathing target. It doesn’t take much. In other research published earlier this year, blood-hunting mosquitoes proved sensitive to the merest whiffs of carbon dioxide. In that study, chemical ecologist Ben Webster applied human odors to gauze pads by wearing them in his socks. (To keep from confounding the experiment, he couldn’t use soaps with any scent during the course of his research.) He then placed the pads in a cage with Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes.
The odor that the pads picked up didn’t attract many female mosquitoes to settle down as if preparing for a serious blood meal. But adding some extra carbon dioxide to the air blowing through the cage triggered considerable landing, Webster and his University of California, Riverside colleagues reported in the January Journal of Chemical Ecology.

