The control of Aedes mosquito populations remains critical for preventing the transmission of arboviruses such as dengue and Chikungunya. There has been considerable investment in the development of reproductive control techniques as a new tools for controlling Aedes populations. While gene drive systems will greatly facilitate trait spread, both mating competiveness of released males and the fitness of the offspring they produce will impact the economic and logistic feasibility of releases. While knowledge is accumulating, mosquito mating behavior remains poorly understood. The specific goal of the proposed project is to investigate whether females utilize acoustic signals in mate choice and if these signals serve as reliable indicators of male fitness and offspring viability. The project proposes to address this goal by determining the relationship between newly identified acoustic courtship signals and the fitness of both males and their offspring. Fitness will be assessed using both traditional measurements of reproductive capacity and new measures including a panel of functional immunity measurements and test for the speed of anti-predator evasive flight reflexes. The potential findings of this exploratory R21 will lead to new insights into determinant of male mating success in key vector of human disease, Aedes aegypti. It will also serve as a basis for a research program designed to facilitate application of acoustics in the assessment and improvement of proposed release lines.
The production of competitive male mosquitoes will facilitate the successful implement new reproductive control strategies. Unfortunately very little is known about what determines male mosquito mating success. We wish determine whether acoustic signals produced by males in courtship can be used to assess these lines and provide insight into determinants of male mating success.
| Murdock, Courtney C; Luckhart, Shirley; Cator, Lauren J (2017) Immunity, host physiology, and behaviour in infected vectors. Curr Opin Insect Sci 20:28-33 |
| Cator, Lauren J; Zanti, Zacharo (2016) Size, sounds and sex: interactions between body size and harmonic convergence signals determine mating success in Aedes aegypti. Parasit Vectors 9:622 |
