Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Attraction of Female Aedes aegypti (L.) to Aphid Honeydew

Daniel A.H. Peach
* ORCID logo ,
Regine Gries
,
Nathan Young
,
Robyn Lakes
,
Erin Galloway
,
Santosh Kumar Alamsetti
,
Elton Ko
,
Amy Ly
,
Gerhard Gries
Version 1 : Received: 4 January 2019 / Approved: 8 January 2019 / Online: 8 January 2019 (10:13:01 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Peach, D.A.H.; Gries, R.; Young, N.; Lakes, R.; Galloway, E.; Alamsetti, S.K.; Ko, E.; Ly, A.; Gries, G. Attraction of Female Aedes aegypti (L.) to Aphid Honeydew. Insects 2019, 10, 43. Peach, D.A.H.; Gries, R.; Young, N.; Lakes, R.; Galloway, E.; Alamsetti, S.K.; Ko, E.; Ly, A.; Gries, G. Attraction of Female Aedes aegypti (L.) to Aphid Honeydew. Insects 2019, 10, 43.

Abstract

Plant sugar is an essential dietary constituent for mosquitoes, and hemipteran honeydew is one of the many forms of plant sugar important to mosquitoes. Many insects rely on volatile honeydew semiochemicals to locate aphids or honeydew itself. Mosquitoes exploit volatile semiochemicals to locate sources of plant sugar but their attraction to honeydew has not previously been investigated. Here we report the attraction of female yellow fever mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, to honeydew odorants from the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae, and the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, feeding on fava bean, Vicia faba. We used solid phase micro-extraction and gas chromatography – mass spectrometry to collect and analyze headspace odorants from honeydew of A. pisum feeding on V. faba. An 8-component synthetic blend of these odorants and synthetic odorant blends of crude and sterile honeydew that we prepared according to literature data all attracted female A. aegypti. The synthetic blend containing microbial odor constituents proved more effective than the blend without these constituents. Our study provides the first evidence for anemotactic attraction of mosquitoes to honeydew and demonstrates a role for microbe-derived odorants in the attraction of mosquitoes to essential plant-sugar resources.

Keywords

Aedes aegypti; Acyrthosiphon pisum; Myzus persicae; Vicia faba; honeydew; honeydew odorants; mosquito sugar feeding; microbe-emitted odorants; mosquito olfaction

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Insect Science

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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