Sexually voracious mosquitoes with super hearing could one day copulate their way to extinction, after scientists discovered that the insects rely on auditory cues to reproduce.
New research has found that when male mosquitoes are genetically engineered to be deaf, they are incapable of finding a mate — even when presented with plenty of attractive options. The findings suggest that males listen for the alluring wing beat of the female and use it to track her down, and that without that, they are helpless.
Emma Duge, from the University of California Santa Barbara, said that this was a crucial insight. “In most organisms, mating behaviour is dependent on a combination of several sensory cues,” she said. “The fact that taking away a single sense can completely abolish mating is fascinating.” It could also be useful.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is not, however, an investigation into whether mosquito numbers can be controlled by making the males deaf in the wild. That would be completely impractical.
Instead, the researchers think that it might be possible to do the reverse — to improve the sexual appetite of sterile lab-grown mosquitoes, and then release them in their millions to crash the population.
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To eliminate the hearing of the mosquitoes, they used genetic engineering to interrupt a particular protein that activates auditory neurons. By showing this was how the males found mates, they argued that boosting this protein could make the mosquitoes more successful.
This is important because one of the most promising current mosquito control techniques has a fatal flaw: the mosquitoes involved in it are not sexy enough.
Female mosquitoes only have sex once, meaning that if the male they have sex with is sterile, they will not reproduce. This has led to the idea of breeding sterile males and then releasing them.
The technique has had some effectiveness, but the problem with it is that the sterile males appear to be less sexually successful than their more vigorous wild counterparts — so lose out in competition for partners.
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If, though, their hearing could be engineered to be better at the same time as they are made sterile, then Duge and her colleagues suggested that could be just the libido boost they need.
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