Vision guides the twilight search for oviposition sites of the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus

by Si Yu Zhao, Hong Kai Liu, Zhen Sheng Xie, Yi Ming Wu, Pei Lin Wu, Tong Liu, Wen Qiang Yang, Jing Wu, JunYu Fu, Chun Mei Wang, Anthony A. James, Xiao-Guang Chen

Oviposition site selection is an important component of vector mosquito reproductive biology. The Asian Tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is a major and important vector of arboviruses including Dengue. Previous studies documented the preference of gravid females for small, dark-colored water containers as oviposition sites, which they sought during the twilight period (dusk) of their locomotor activity. Vision plays an important role in this behavior, and factors such as the shape, size, and color of the container, light intensity, polarization, spectrum, and other visual cues guide the search for suitable oviposition sites, but the mechanistic factors driving this behavior are unclear.

We blindfolded adult female compound eyes and observed the effects of a lack of vision on the ability to discriminate and utilize preferred oviposition sites. Furthermore, the transcriptomes of blindfolded mosquitoes were screened to identify genes with vision-sensitive expression profiles and gene-editing was used to create non-functional mutations in two of them, rhodopsin-like (mutation designated ‘rho-l^△807’) and kynurenine hydroxylase (mutation designated ‘kh^w’). Behavioral tests of both mutant and control strains revealed that the rho-l^△807 mutant mosquitoes had a significant decrease in their ability to search for preferred oviposition sites that correlated with a reduced ability to recognize long-wavelength red light. The kh^w mutant mosquitoes also had a reduced ability to identify preferred oviposition sites that correlated with reductions in their ability to respond to variations in daily brightness and their ability to discriminate among different color options of the containers and background monochromatic light.

This study underscores the importance of visual cues in the oviposition site selection behavior of adult female Ae. albopictus. We demonstrate that wild-type rho-l and kh gene products play a crucial role in this behavior, as mutants exhibit altered sensitivity or recognition of light intensity and substrate colors.