Sensory Discrimination of Blood and Floral Nectar by Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes

Veronica Jové (1) , Zhongyan Gong (1) , Felix J H Hol (2, 3) , Zhilei Zhao (4) , Trevor R Sorrells (1, 5) , Thomas S Carroll (1) , Manu Prakash (3) , Carolyn S Mcbride (4) , Leslie B Vosshall (1, 5, 6)

1 Rockefeller University [New York]
2 IVI - Interactions Virus-Insectes - Insect-Virus Interactions
3 Stanford University
4 Princeton University
5 Kavli Neural Systems Institute
6 HHMI - Howard Hughes Medical Institute [New York]

Sensory Discrimination of Blood and Floral Nectar by Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Highlights d Neurons in the syringe-like stylet are the first to detect blood as mosquitoes bite d The taste of blood is integrated across taste qualities and stylet neuron subsets d Subsets are tuned to distinct blood components and insensitive to floral sugars d Polymodal taste quality integration assigns a blood-specific context to glucose

Keywords: Aedes aegypti; GCaMP calcium imaging; blood-feeding behavior; chemogenetics; gustatory receptors; ionotropic receptors; mosquito; nectar-feeding behavior; stylet; taste

Domains: Cognitive science; Neuroscience

Veronica Jové, Zhongyan Gong, Felix J H Hol, Zhilei Zhao, Trevor R Sorrells, et al.. Sensory Discrimination of Blood and Floral Nectar by Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes. Neuron, 2020, 108 (6), pp.1163 - 1180.e12. ⟨10.1016/j.neuron.2020.09.019⟩. ⟨pasteur-03560474⟩