This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: To prevent the spread of dangerous diseases by mosquitoes, scientists have long studied their reproductive mechanisms to control their population sizes. Now, researchers have discovered that the fruitless gene in mosquitoes is responsible for males' ability to locate and mate with females by listening for their wingbeat sounds.
Mutating this gene in males of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, makes them incapable of locating female mosquitoes. The research team was led by postdoctoral researcher Yumin Loh, assistant professor Matthew Su and professor Azusa Kamikouchi of the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM) at Nagoya University in Japan, in collaboration with professor Daniel Eberl of the University of Iowa in the U.S. Their research was published in the journal PLOS Biology on Oct. 27, 2026.
The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is a vector of diseases including dengue fever, Zika fever and yellow fever. At dusk, males gather to form swarms, where they detect the wingbeat sounds of females flying into the swarm, pursue them and mate with them. After mating, females search for a host, take blood and lay eggs.
Hearing is an essential sensory modality for males to mate, and elucidating the mechanisms underlying hearing is expected to lead to new strategies for controlling mosquito reproduction. In insects, one of the genes that generates sex differences in neural function is fruitless. Previous studies using Drosophila (i.e., fruit flies) have revealed that fruitless is primarily responsible for generating sex differences in behavior.
In this study, the research team elucidated the influence of fruitless on the behavior of male mosquitoes and their hearing systems. A mosquito's "ears" are auditory organs that detect sound. The ear consists of the Johnston's organ located at the base of the antenna and the long flagellum extending from it.
Mosquito ears are highly sexually dimorphic, and there are substantial differences in the frequencies of sound to which male and female ears are tuned. In this study, the research team discovered that fruitless mutant males, unlike normal males, do not gather with other males at dusk and instead exhibit female-like behavior. Additionally, while normal males displayed strong attraction to frequencies matching female wingbeat sounds, mutant males were not attracted to any of the frequencies tested.
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