Sensory mechanisms for the shift from phytophagy to haematophagy in mosquitoes

Abstract

The Culicomorpha are an infraorder of several families of blood-feeding flies, including mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae). Here we discuss the evolutionary origins of blood-feeding within the Culicomorpha and review literature that suggests this behaviour may have evolved from ancestral plant-feeding or a combination of plant-feeding and insect-feeding. Sialomic and life-history evidence suggest that plant-feeding, concurrent or not with insect-feeding, is parsimonious as an ancestral diet for Culicomorpha. We review the chemical parsimony observed between vertebrate headspace odours, floral headspace odours, and honeydew headspace odours, which are behaviourally attractive to many of the Culicomorpha. We also review the sensory and neural mechanisms involved in changes in olfactory attraction and we propose this observed chemical parsimony as a hypothesis for an associative mechanism which may have led to the development of blood-feeding from plant-feeding that is consistent with a 'path of least resistance' for the sensory changes necessary to undergo host shifts.