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Behavioral heterogeneity in host seeking and post-feeding suppression among disease vector mosquitoes

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Abstract

Female mosquitoes bite vertebrate hosts and consume their blood to obtain nutrients for egg production, with species-specific host preferences and host-seeking strategies. Biting-related behaviors are modulated by internal physiological states, such as the suppression of host-seeking after a full blood meal, a phenomenon that varies in timing and duration across mosquito species. Here, we establish a behavior monitoring and classification pipeline to systematically compare baseline host-seeking behavior and post-blood meal suppression in Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex mosquitoes. We find distinct behavioral signatures and notable interspecific differences in the onset and duration of host-seeking suppression. While Aedes and Anopheles host-seeking behaviors have been extensively studied in laboratory settings, comparable behavioral data for Culex have been limited. Our findings establish a framework to study host seeking across key vector species, providing comparative insight into the internal control of behavioral plasticity and offering a foundation for improved modeling of host interactions and vector control.

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Data availability

All raw data are provided in the associated data file, and all videos can be accessed at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15478199)70.

Code availability

All code is deposited in GitHub (https://github.com/Duvall-Lab/UeharaDongDuvall2025).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Thomas Gabel for assistance with animal husbandry, and Lindy McBride and Conor McMeniman for providing Anopheles and Culex strains. We thank Richard Hormigo and the Advanced Instrumentation group at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute for support with assay development. We thank members of the Duvall lab for comments and useful discussions on the manuscript. This work was supported by the following grants: NIGMS (R35 GM137888) (LBD), Beckman Young Investigator Award (LBD), Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences Award (LBD), Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience (LBD), JSPS Fostering Joint International Research (#21KK0273) (TU).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Takuya Uehara, Linhan Dong.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Takuya Uehara, Linhan Dong & Laura B. Duvall

  2. Division of Insect Advanced Technology, Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, NARO, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Takuya Uehara

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  1. Takuya Uehara
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  2. Linhan Dong
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  3. Laura B. Duvall
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Contributions

TU and LBD designed experiments. TU performed behavioral experiments and TU and LD performed blood feeding and meal quantification. TU and LD designed behavioral assays, wrote code for the behavioral analyses, and analyzed the data. TU, LD, and LBD prepared the figures and wrote the manuscript.

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Laura B. Duvall.

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Communications Biology thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Nicolas Desneux and Mengtan Xing. A peer review file is available.

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Uehara, T., Dong, L. & Duvall, L.B. Behavioral heterogeneity in host seeking and post-feeding suppression among disease vector mosquitoes.
Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09987-z

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