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H2020Individual fellowship2017–2019

NEURO-SWARM · Efferent modulation of auditory sensitivity in mosquitoes: From auditory transduction to swarming behaviour

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-04-01 → 2019-05-01
EU contribution
€183,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

Efferent modulation of auditory sensitivity in mosquitoes: From auditory transduction to swarming behaviour

Malaria is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes that kills nearly half a million people each year, mostly young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mosquito control, or the reduction of mosquito populations, is essential to fight the disease. The emergence of insecticide resistance in recent years push for the development of novel vector control tools to reduce the impact of malaria worldwide. The malaria mosquito depends on their sense of hearing to mate as mating partners are recognized through the sound produced by their beating wings. These acoustic interactions leading to mating take place when mosquitoes come close to each other in aerial swarms. As hearing and swarming behaviour are essential for mosquito reproduction, they are prime targets for control interventions. However, they have been traditionally underexploited due to a lack of understanding of the biological mechanisms that orchestrate them. The project NEURO-SWARM has investigated novel molecular pathways that modulate mosquito hearing and swarming behaviour to target them as a novel mosquito control approach. Previously, we had shown that mosquito audition is modulated by the action of the biogenic amines octopamine and serotonin. As octopamine and serotonin receptors are potential targets for the development of novel insecticides, they offer a promising alternative to disrupt mosquito hearing and therefore mosquito reproduction. The objectives of the Marie Curie IF project NEURO-SWARM were to thoroughly study the role of octopamine and serotonin in malaria mosquito hearing and to investigate their relation to swarming behaviour. By combining molecular, physiological and behavioural analysis we aimed to unravel this fascinating system and understand its potential as vector control target.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Hearing in mosquitoes is crucial for mating partner recognition. Within mating swarms, males hear the wing beat of females and chase them to copulate. Despite the importance of this behaviour, very little is known about the molecular mechanisms involved. I and my co-workers have recently discovered an auditory efferent system innervating the mosquito hearing organ, the Johnston's Organ (JO) that releases the biogenic amines octopamine and serotonin and modulates the auditory function. However, we still do not know how this efferent system modulates hearing in the context of swarming. Given the intimate connection between hearing and swarming in mosquitoes, and considering that biogenic amines have been described in other insects to induce swarming, I hypothesize that biogenic amines induce mosquitoes to aggregate into swarms and upregulate their auditory sensitivity to increase male mosquito attraction to females. My objectives are to use a multidisciplinary approach, including molecular biology, physiological and behavioural methods, to study if biogenic amines increase the auditory sensitivity during swarming and to assess the potential of disrupting biogenic amine signalling to impair mosquito hearing and swarming. To this end, I will first study temporal variations of biogenic amine signalling pathways in the mosquito JO during the swarming period. I will then generate mosquito mutants to impair biogenic amine signalling and subsequently use these mutants to assess their auditory function and swarming behaviour phenotypes aiming at defining a direct involvement of biogenic amines in mosquito hearing and mating. We believe that our work will lead to developing novel mosquito control tools. Firstly, improving our knowledge on mosquito hearing can lead to develop novel acoustic traps. Secondly, the characterization of biogenic amine receptors could directly identify new insecticide targets. Thirdly, altering swarming behaviour can disrupt mosquito mating.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union