TY  - JOUR
T1  - How Mosquitoes Construct a Human Host from Odour, Heat, Humidity, Visual Contrast, Movement, and Previous Experience
A1  - Camila Ortega
A1  - Diego Molina
A1  - Andres Perez
A1  - Valeria Soto
JF  - Entomology and Applied Science Letters
JO  - Entomol Appl Sci Lett
SN  - 2349-2864
Y1  - 2025
VL  - 12
IS  - 4
DO  - 10.51847/5GmYNMHKw1
SP  - 12
EP  - 22
N2  - Mosquito host recognition is often described as attraction to carbon dioxide, human odour, warmth, humidity, or visible targets, yet this cue-by-cue framing does not explain how a mosquito converts incomplete and changing sensory information into approach, landing, probing, or abandonment. This distinction matters because detecting a host-associated signal is not equivalent to selecting a host, laboratory attraction is not equivalent to field contact, and landing is not equivalent to blood feeding. This article develops an original conceptual synthesis of mosquito host recognition as a state-dependent, temporally organized process of host construction. Evidence concerning multisensory host seeking, carbon dioxide, skin odours, peripheral and central olfactory processing, thermal and humidity sensing, visual contrast, movement, internal physiological state, learning, and prior experience is integrated around successive behavioural transitions. The strongest defensible synthesis is that mosquitoes do not rely on a universal hierarchy of independently attractive cues. Instead, sensory inputs can activate searching, gate the use of other modalities, specify candidate-host identity, confirm proximity, interrupt an approach, or modify the probability of proceeding to contact. The importance of each input therefore depends on distance, cue reliability, species and population history, reproductive and nutritional state, previous encounters, and environmental conditions. Evidence remains constrained by heterogeneous laboratory apparatuses, simplified odour plumes and visual backgrounds, inconsistent behavioural endpoints, and limited validation under natural host competition. The proposed host-construction model is consequently presented as an evidence-grounded but non-validated scholarly structure. Its principal implication is that experiments, traps, repellents, and control tools should target explicitly defined behavioural transitions and should be evaluated across multimodal, state-dependent, and environmentally variable conditions rather than through isolated cue responses alone.
UR  - https://easletters.com/article/how-mosquitoes-construct-a-human-host-from-odour-heat-humidity-visual-contrast-movement-and-pre-2d1hhbvucwexhnu
ER  -