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Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Determining Temperature Preference of Mosquitoes and Other Ectotherms
Published on: September 28, 2022
Mosquito heat seeking is driven by an ancestral cooling receptor
Chloe Greppi1, Willem J Laursen1, Gonzalo Budelli1
1Department of Biology and Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02453, USA.
Abstract:
Mosquitoes transmit pathogens that kill >700,000 people annually. These insects use body heat to locate and feed on warm-blooded hosts, but the molecular basis of such behavior is unknown. Here, we identify ionotropic receptor IR21a, a receptor conserved throughout insects, as a key mediator of heat seeking in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae Although Ir21a mediates heat avoidance in Drosophila, we find it drives heat seeking and heat-stimulated blood feeding in Anopheles At a cellular level, Ir21a is essential for the detection of cooling, suggesting that during evolution mosquito heat seeking relied on cooling-mediated repulsion. Our data indicate that the evolution of blood feeding in Anopheles involves repurposing an ancestral thermoreceptor from non-blood-feeding Diptera.
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