Heritability of Attractiveness to Mosquitoes
Female mosquitoes display preferences for certain individuals over others, which is determined by differences in volatile chemicals produced by the human body and detected by mosquitoes. Body odour can be controlled genetically but the existence of a genetic basis for differential attraction to insects has never been formally demonstrated. This study investigated heritability of attractiveness to mosquitoes by evaluating the response of Aedes aegypti (=Stegomyia aegypti) mosquitoes to odours from the hands of identical and non-identical twins in a dual-choice assay. Volatiles from individuals in an identical twin pair showed a high correlation in attractiveness to mosquitoes, while non-identical twin pairs showed a significantly lower correlation. Overall, there was a strong narrow-sense heritability of 0.62 (SE 0.124) for relative attraction and 0.67 (0.354) for flight activity based on the average of ten measurements. The results demonstrate an underlying genetic component detectable by mosquitoes through olfaction. Understanding the genetic basis for attractiveness could create a more informed approach to repellent development.
Keywords
Flight activity; Body odour; Attractiveness; Human genetics; Mosquitoes display preferences; Invertebrate genetics; Monozygotic twins; Dizygotic twinsData / Code
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subject - Data
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- Available under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0
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info - Raw data and pair means used in publication
grid_on - application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
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- 92kB
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subject - Data
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- Available under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0
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info - Pair means combines the data for use in analysis with values provided for relative attraction and flight activity
description - text/plain
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- 4kB
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subject - Data
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- Available under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0
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info - Raw data for both dizygotic and monozygotic twins from Y-tube olfactometer experiment
description - text/plain
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- 62kB
