Mosquitoes may be small, but they are a formidable foe. Not only can they smell over 400 chemicals that we emit and detect the carbon dioxide we breathe out, but they can even adapt their daily behavior in response to our own.
With the help of a $2.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), researchers at Virginia Tech are now investigating how mosquitoes adjust their olfactory, or smelling, rhythms in response to changes in our own daily activity.
"Mosquitoes are sometimes described as the deadliest animal on Earth," said Clément Vinauger, principal investigator on the project and assistant professor from the Department of Biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "What we are seeing is an increase in the rate of mosquitoes that become resistant to insecticides and have some other level of behavioral resistance. We need another tool or other tools to control mosquito populations."