Conducting an Analysis of Mosquito Flight Behaviors in a Wind Tunnel.

Prior to conducting wind tunnel experiments, mosquitoes must be prepared for testing. Important factors and state-dependent processes of the mosquito-like the sex, age, infection status, reproductive status, or nutritional status-should be evaluated and motivated by questions and hypotheses one seeks to address. Other critical external factors that can impact the mosquitoes' behavior and should be controlled for both in the colony and in the room where the wind tunnel experiments take place include the circadian rhythm, room temperature, light intensity, and relative humidity.

Experiments and Analysis of Mosquito Flight Behaviors in a Wind Tunnel: An Introduction.

Mosquitoes detect and navigate to important resources, like a host, using combinations of different sensory stimuli. The relative importance of the sensory cues can change as the mosquito gets closer to their target. Other factors, both internal and external, can also influence the mosquito behavior.

The olfactory gating of visual preferences to human skin and visible spectra in mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes track odors, locate hosts, and find mates visually. The color of a food resource, such as a flower or warm-blooded host, can be dominated by long wavelengths of the visible light spectrum (green to red for humans) and is likely important for object recognition and localization. However, little is known about the hues that attract mosquitoes or how odor affects mosquito visual search behaviors.

Elimination of vision-guided target attraction in Aedes aegypti using CRISPR.

Blood-feeding insects, such as the mosquito, Aedes (Ae.) aegypti, use multiple senses to seek out and bite humans. Upon exposure to the odor of CO, the attention of female mosquitoes to potential targets is greatly increased.

Visuo-Motor Feedback Modulates Neural Activities in the Medulla of the Honeybee, .

Behavioral and internal-state modulation of sensory processing has been described in several organisms. In insects, visual neurons in the optic lobe are modulated by locomotion, but the degree to which visual-motor feedback modulates these neurons remains unclear. Moreover, it also remains unknown whether self-generated and externally generated visual motion are processed differently.

Honeybees in a virtual reality environment learn unique combinations of colour and shape.

Honeybees are well-known models for the study of visual learning and memory. Whereas most of our knowledge of learned responses comes from experiments using free-flying bees, a tethered preparation would allow fine-scale control of the visual stimuli as well as accurate characterization of the learned responses. Unfortunately, conditioning procedures using visual stimuli in tethered bees have been limited in their efficacy.

Olfaction in context-sources of nuance in plant-pollinator communication.

Floral scents act as long-distance signals to attract pollinators, but volatiles emitted from the vegetation and neighboring plant community may modify this mutualistic communication system. What impact does the olfactory background have on pollination systems and their evolution? We consider recent behavioral studies that address the context of when and where volatile backgrounds influence a pollinator's perception of floral blends. In parallel, we review neurophysiological studies that show the importance of blend composition and background in modifying the representation of floral blends in the pollinator brain, as well as experience-dependent plasticity in increasing the representation of a rewarding odor.