Female Aedes aegypti mosquito during blood mealWIKIMEDIA, JAMES GATHANYPeople who claim that mosquitoes just love them may be onto something. According to a new study of a few dozen pairs of twins, genetics may play a role in whose blood a mosquito chooses to dine on.
“Twins that were identical were very similar in their level of attractiveness to mosquitoes, and twins that were [not identical] were very different in their level of attractiveness,” study coauthor James Logan, a medical entomologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told NPR’s Shots. “So it suggests that the trait for being attractive or unattractive to mosquitoes is genetically controlled.” Logan and his colleagues published their results this week (April 22) in PLOS ONE.
The fact that mosquitoes—specifically, female mosquitoes, which feed on blood to nourish their eggs—are more attracted to some people than others has been long established. And genetics are not the only factor involved. For some reason, mosquitoes find pregnant women particularly attractive, and people infected with the malaria ...
