This article was co-authored by FIU Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Jamie Theobald and FIU Postdoctoral Research Associate Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi, republished from The Conversation.
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Florian Muijres has been awarded a prestigious grant to study what the mating dance of malaria mosquitoes in a swarm looks like. In this research, Muijres will collaborate with colleagues from the USA, Belgium and Burkina Faso. The study may offer a new possibility in the fight against malaria: preventing the mosquitoes from procreating. The Human Frontier Science Program has awarded a 400-thousand-euro annual grant for this three-year investigation.
The basics of how malaria mosquitoes mate is known: in complex swarms of thousands of males. Occasionally females will join the swam, and, after some time, a female may fly alongside a male. ‘In a swarm and during flight, the male and female will synchronise their wingbeat pattern’, Muijres says. ‘This synchronisation can be seen as a mating dance.’