蚊子负责传播影响生命和生计的多种致命病原体人山人海每年在世界各地。由于许多这些疾病的特定疫苗和预防药物的可用性有限，因此媒介控制通常被视为the most effective way减少它们的传播。对于黄热病蚊子，埃及埃及（登革热，基孔肯雅和寨卡病毒的主要向量），基于无菌和转基因男性的质量释放的策略抑制当地人口or使它们对病毒感染难治are now at advanced stages of development and deployment. Fundamentally, these programs rely on modified males competing for, and mating with, wild females in the target population.了解蚊子的知识因此，有可能提高这种控制方法的有效性。
传统上，蚊子交配是一个很难研究的现象。在埃及埃及，，，，it usually takes place in small, male-dominated swarms, nearby a blood-meal host. Males detect incoming females via the sounds produced by their beating wings, and following a fast-paced, mid-air pursuit, attempt to seize and mate with them. The likelihood of success for any given mating attempt is known to be quite low; females deter males by evading them in flight, or by kicking them away once contact has been made. But the factors that govern this apparent choice remain somewhat elusive.
最近的证据表明,声学信号plays an important role in the mosquito mating process. As mentioned above, males are strongly attracted towards the sound of a female’s wings. When close to one another, this attraction switches to an interaction, as each mosquito shifts their wingbeat in response to that of the other. In some pairs this results in an overlap of flight tones at frequencies above the dominant audible fundamental, recognisable as the all-too-familiar irritating buzz that many readers will have had the misfortune of experiencing! This frequency matching, commonly referred to as “谐波收敛”，与交配成功增加，，，，yet it is unclear how it fits into the overall mating sequence.
在我们最近的论文中，我们捕获了两对之间的个人交配互动埃及埃及使用同步的高速视频和声音录音。我们的目标很简单：创建一张详细的交配过程地图，集成行为和声学特征，以比较成功和失败的交配尝试。我们使用手动视觉处理来得分和时间某些行为，例如踢和身体重新定向。然后，我们使用先进的信号提取技术来从男性和女性翼展中得出高质量的声音数据，从而将这些信息叠加到我们行为事件的时间表上。
我们发现交配埃及埃及遵循在几秒钟内发生的高度可重复的途径。在与雌性接触的腿上伸向她的腿，然后一名雄性立即爬到她的前部，然后固定握力并采用“通风到通风口”的位置，这是交配的最终先决条件。
Most mating attempts resulted in failure, which typically occurred in one of two ways. Firstly, early in the interaction, males were displaced by female kicks, which were delivered at high intensity during this period. Secondly—for those males that were able to hang on—females would often simply stop flying, leading to a breakdown of the attempt, but only before the venter-to-venter position had been adopted. Importantly, successful males were kicked at a reduced rate and were able to sustain paired flight for longer than those that were rejected.
Comments