If Droning be the Food of Love, Buzz On
New research into the mating habits of mosquitoes has uncovered a hitherto hidden truth: despite simple antenna, the female is one of the best listeners in the insect kingdom. For years it was thought the male was best because of his highly specialised hearing organ.
Gay Gibson from the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich, and Ian Russell from the University of Sussex, have discovered for the first time how mosquitoes mate.
They listen to the buzz of each other’s wings and change pitch until they sound exactly the same. Two male mosquitoes can’t do it: they can only make sudden adjustments. It takes the female to make the subtle adjustments to match the male. Two females just avoid each other.
Gay Gibson said: “No-one has ever described before a system by which two insects communicate acoustically while they are in flight – which is quite tricky, since they are controlling the action of their wings to keep airborne and to let the other one know who they are.
“In the past it was thought the male did all the work because he had this complicated equipment and flew to the female, while the female seemed passive. Now we know she is working equally hard to call out to the male and match his buzz.”
Mosquitoes find each other when clouds of male mosquitoes swarm over landmarks and mate with females as they join the swarm. This is the first time scientists have discovered how males and females manage to speak the same language in a babel of buzzes.
Their buzz is created by the wings beating at up to 600 times each second. Mosquitoes typically travel at about 1 mph.
Ian Russell said: "This research offers a great opportunity for us to explore the underlying mechanisms and their potential role in sexual selection in other mosquito species, including those that carry malaria."
The study is published in the journal Current Biology.
-ENDS-
For further information contact:
Hester Brown
Public Relations Unit
University of Greenwich
Tel: 020 8331 7663
Email: hester.brown@gre.ac.uk