Mosquito Standards

Mosquitoes, mosquitoes everywhere! Now, my past post mentioned that the female mosquitoe Anopheles gambiae  is attracted to hosts that 'host' a more diverse population of micorbiota on their skin. Skin bacteria are very important components of body odour, without these guys body odour would be odourless to the human nose (so when your friend smells, just blame it on the bacteria).

According to an experiment, the feet are attractive to a female A. gambiae and the 16S rRNA gene (a gene used to identify bacteria) has the signature of the microbiota on the foot (Verhulst. N.O, et al. 2011).It was also stated that washing your feet with bactericidal soap alters the selection of biting sites (Verhulst. N.O, et al. 2011).

The experiment conducted required a group of 48 males free from illness and any regular medication aged 20 -64. 24 hours prior to experimentation they were not to drink alcohol, eat garlic, onions or spicy food or use perfumed cosmetics (Verhulst. N.O, et al. 2011). 24 hours before the experiment volunteer took a shower, without soap and had to wear nylon socks (which were provided by the research team) (Verhulst. N.O, et al. 2011).

The end result showed that 9 of the men were more attractive to female A. gambiae then the rest (Verhulst. N.O, et al. 2011). Staphylococcus spp. (skin bacteria) was determined to be directly correlated to the attractiveness of individuals (Verhulst. N.O, et al. 2011).
So really, if you want to be a mosquitoes best friend.. all you need to do is not shower..and it will not be me testing that theory :)

References:

Verhulst. N.O., Haasnoot, G.W., Mumm, R., Bouwmeeser, H.J., Claas, F.H.J., Dicke, M., van Loon, Joop, J.A, Takken, W., Knight, R., Smallegange, R.C., Qiu, Y.T., Beiileveld, H., Maliepaard, C., Knights, D., Schulz, S., Berg-Lyons, D., Lauber, C.L. &Verduijn, W, 2011, “Composition of human skin microbiota affects attractiveness to malaria mosquitoes”, Plos one, vol. 6, no. 12, pp. E28991.