Mosquitoes act as vectors of diseases which cause hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Current control methods are proving increasingly inadequate in the face of increased insecticidal resistance and adaptative mosquito behaviours. Novel control methodologies are thus required, which necessitates an improved understanding of basic mosquito biology. This is particularly true for the two most important mosquito behaviors from a human perspective; host seeking and mating.

Whilst these behaviors are of course highly distinct, underlying both is the mosquito’s circadian clock. Mosquitoes are exquisitely circadian animals and show a strong rhythmicity in their biting and copulating propensities. This symposium will focus on the latest scientific advances in our knowledge of the mosquito circadian clock, and how genetic manipulations to the core clock machinery can impact mosquito behavior.

 

Prof Hirotaka Kanuka (Tokyo Jikei Medical University) will first introduce some fundamentals of mosquito biology, including the influence of the clock on general mosquito behaviors. Dr Matthew Su (Nagoya University) will then talk about the role of the clock during mosquito mating, before Dr ChunHong Chen (NHRI, Taiwan) will conclude proceedings by discussing how the clock affects mosquito host-seeking as well as the immune system.

 

15:00 – 15:10 Welcome

15:10 – 16:10 Prof Hirotaka Kanuka ‘Fundamentals of mosquito biology’ [Japanese]

16:10 – 16:50 Dr Matthew Su ‘The role of acoustic communication in Aedes courtship’

16:50 – 17:50 Dr ChunHong Chen ‘CRISPR/Cas9 genomic editing for generating circadian and immune protein mutants in Aedes aegypti’

17:50 – 18:00 Concluding remarks