Hitting the right note at the right time: Circadian control of audibility in <i>Anopheles</i> mosquito mating swarms is mediated by flight tones
Jason Somers, Marcos Georgiades, Matthew P. Su, Judit Bagi, Marta Andrés, Alexandros C Alampounti, Gordon Mills, Watson Ntabaliba, Sarah Moore, Roberta Spaccapelo, Joerg T. Albert
Abstract
circadian clock not only ensures a tight synchrony of male and female activity but also helps sharpen the males’ acoustic detection system: By raising their flight tones to 1.5 times the female flight tone, males enhance the audibility of females, specifically at swarm time. Previously reported “harmonic convergence” events are only a random by-product of the mosquitoes’ flight tone variance and not a signature of acoustic interaction between males and females. The flight tones of individual mosquitoes occupy narrow, partly non-overlapping frequency ranges, suggesting that the audibility of individual females varies across males.