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Cited by 315

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Mosquitoes Use Vision to Associate Odor Plumes with Thermal Targets

Open access
van Breugel, Floris, Riffell, Jeff, Fairhall, Adrienne, Dickinson, Michael H.·2015·Current Biology

Abstract

Summary All moving animals, including flies [1–3], sharks [4], and humans [5], experience a dynamic sensory landscape that is a function of both their trajectory through space and the distribution of stimuli in the environment. This is particularly apparent for mosquitoes, which use a combination of olfactory, visual, and thermal cues to locate hosts [6–10]. Mosquitoes are thought to detect suitable hosts by the presence of a sparse CO2 plume, which they track by surging upwind and casting crosswind [11]. Upon approach, local cues such as heat and skin volatiles help them identify a landing site [12–15]. Recent evidence suggests that thermal attraction is gated by the presence of CO2 [6], although this conclusion was based experiments in which the actual flight trajectories of the animals were unknown and visual cues were not studied. Using a 3-dimensional tracking system we show that rather than gating heat sensing, the detection of CO2 actually activates a strong attraction to visual features. This visual reflex guides the mosquitoes to potential hosts where they are close enough to detect thermal cues. By experimentally decoupling the olfactory, visual, and thermal cues, we show that the motor reactions to these stimuli are independently controlled. Given that humans become visible to mosquitoes at a distance of 5–15 m [16], visual cues play a critical intermediate role in host localization by coupling long-range plume tracking to behaviors that require short-range cues. Rather than direct neural coupling, the separate sensory-motor reflexes are linked as a result of the interaction between the animal’s reactions and the spatial structure of the stimuli in the environment.

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Metadata

Authors
van Breugel, F., Riffell, J., Fairhall, A., & Dickinson, M. H.
Venue
Current Biology
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-08
Volume
25
Issue
16
Pages
2123-2129
ISSN
0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1632007921
Cited by
315
References
33
FWCI
7.70
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Mosquitoes Use Vision to Associate Odor Plumes with Thermal Targets. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.cub.2015.06.046
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van Breugel, F., Riffell, J., Fairhall, A., & Dickinson, M. H. (2015). Mosquitoes Use Vision to Associate Odor Plumes with Thermal Targets. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.06.046

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