Mosquito Buzz Actually a Love Song

Jan. 8, 2009 -- The soft duet of lovers crooning to each other in perfect harmony is partly responsible for the scourges of dengue and yellow fever, according to new research, which finds that mosquitoes sing to each other to determine mating.

"We think that females could use harmonic matching as a fitness measure for the males," said Ron Hoy, a professor at Cornell University and co-author of the study that appears today in Science. The new research opens a new avenue for public health officials to control disease-spreading populations of mosquitoes.

It's no secret the mosquitoes have a characteristic buzz. It's one of the few warning signs humans have that a winged bloodsucker is about feast on them. For years scientists thought that the buzz was merely an artifact of a mosquito's beating wings, and didn't even think that mosquitoes could hear it.

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Each sex has its own distinctive range. Heavier females beat their wings at about 400 hertz. Lighter weight males beat their wings at about 600 hertz. To humans, it all sounds like a steady buzz. To mosquitoes however, the notes inside that buzz can range all the way up to 1,800 hertz.

WATCH VIDEO: Mosquitoes Use Music to Mate

Mosquitoes can hear each other from roughly one meter (3.3 feet) away. As a male approaches a female they begin a flying musical number, as the female singes a diddy and then waits for the male to replicate it in harmony. If he fails to accurately reproduce the sound, the female flies away. If she is satisfied with his love song, she mates with him.

To discover this, scientists super-glued male mosquitoes to a pin and listened as females flew around them. The Cornell University scientists used Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits diseases such as yellow fever and dengue fever.

Each species of mosquito has its own song, explained Gabriella Gibson, a mosquito expert at the University of Greenwich who studies the love songs of the Anopheles mosquito, which can transmit malaria and other diseases. By listening in on the songs that mosquitoes sing to each other scientists could determine which species of mosquitoes are in a storm.