Human attractive cues and mosquito host-seeking behavior

Female mosquitoes use chemical and physical cues, including vision, smell, heat, and humidity, to orient toward hosts. Body odors are produced by skin res-ident bacteria that convert metabolites secreted in sweat into odorants that con-fer the characteristic body scent. Mosquitoes detect these compounds using olfactory receptors in their antennal olfactory receptor neurons. Such informa-tion is further integrated with the senses of temperature and humidity, as well as vision, processed in the brain into a behavioral output, leading to host finding. Knowledge of human scent components unveils a variety of odorants that are attractive to mosquitoes, but also odor-triggering repellency. Finding ways to divert human-seeking behavior by female mosquitoes using odorants can possibly mitigate mosquito-borne pathogen transmission.