Ring T Cardé

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ORAL PRESENTATION Open Access
Moth and mosquito orientation to odor sources:
how the structure of the odor plume modulates
navigation
Ring T Cardé
From 1st International Workshop on Odor Spaces
Hannover, Germany. 4-7 September 2013
Finding downwind sources of odor first requires respon-
ders to contact the odor plume. Whether flying insects
have optimal strategies to minimize either time to con-
tact or energy expended en route is poorly understood
and perhaps their heading with respect to contempora-
neous wind flow is simply random.
Once the plume is sensed, flying insects track along
such plumes by heading upwind as long as contact with
the odor is maintained. Their heading with respect to
wind flow is gauged by visual feedback, a mechanism
termed optomotor anemotaxis. If the insect is heading
due upwind, image flow is front-to-rear; if the insect is
headed at an angle to wind flow, it also experiences some
transverse image flow. Simply flying upwind along the
plume, however, does not routinely lead to source loca-
tion. Large odor-free gaps caused by turbulent diffusion
and by objects in the environment require strategies for
re- contacting the plume, as seen in the casting behavior
of moths. Another challenge to successful plume tracking
is imposed by changes in wind direction and velocity;
these can misalign the path along the plume and the
instantaneous direction upwind, also resulting in casting
maneuvers. Within the plume the rate of encountering
odor filaments seems to dictate a moth’s heading, with
rates >5 Hz promoting a straightened-out upwind course
Female mosquitoes orientating to prospective hosts and
male moths orienting to a calling female face similar
navigational challenges, but, compared to a moth signal,
the odor source for mosquitoes is generally much larger
and produces a complex odor bouquet. Aedes aegypti, a
highly anthropophilic mosquito, orients upwind to car-
bon dioxide and to human skin odor, which unlike moth
pheromones is a complex and somewhat variable blend
of hundreds of constituents. Females orient well to either
carbon dioxide or skin odor, but the spatial presentation
and interaction of these two cues influences the mosqui-
to’s moment-to-moment maneuvers and odor threshold.
Published: 16 April 2014
doi:10.1186/2044-7248-3-S1-O27
Cite this article as: Cardé: Moth and mosquito orientation to odor
sources: how the structure of the odor plume modulates navigation.
Flavour 2014 3(Suppl 1):O27.
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Department of Entomology, University of California Riverside, CA 92521, USA
Cardé Flavour 2014, 3(Suppl 1):O27
http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/3/S1/O27
© 2014 Cardé; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://
creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.


Moth and mosquito orientation to odor sources: how the structure of the odor plume modulates navigation

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Moth and mosquito orientation to odor sources: how the structure of the odor plume modulates navigation

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