Different People Attract Different Mosquitoes... Body Odor and Skin Microbes Identified as Attracting Factors

While it may seem like some people are exceptionally prone to mosquito bites, a study has found that there is no single universal "mosquito magnet" that is equally attractive to all types of mosquitoes.

A research team at Florida International University (FIU) announced on August 10 in the scientific journal iScience that they reached this conclusion through an experiment investigating how 3 species of disease-vector mosquitoes, including the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti), are attracted to 119 adult humans.

The research team stated that even for the same individual, the degree of attraction varied depending on the mosquito species, and that body odor and skin microbes were linked to these differences. They added that identifying these human scent components could help develop new strategies to combat mosquito-borne diseases.

The three mosquito species used in the experiment were the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti), the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), and the southern house mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus).

The yellow fever mosquito and the Asian tiger mosquito can transmit flaviviruses that cause dengue, Zika, and yellow fever, while the southern house mosquito can transmit the West Nile virus.

Mosquitoes are known to locate blood hosts by integrating various sensory information, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), body odor, visual cues, humidity, and heat.

However, human body odor is made up of a highly diverse combination of over 1,000 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), many of which have not yet had their characteristics fully identified, the research team pointed out.

The research team measured how much 61 men and 58 women in Miami, Florida, were attracted to diurnal mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus) that feed during the day and nocturnal mosquitoes (Culex quinquefasciatus) that feed at night.

The results showed that while there were individuals with high attractiveness to any single mosquito species, not a single person had high attractiveness across all three species.

The yellow fever mosquito and the Asian tiger mosquito tended to be attracted to the same individuals to some extent, but the correlation was weak.


In contrast, there was almost no correlation in human-specific attractiveness between the yellow fever mosquito and the southern house mosquito, or between the Asian tiger mosquito and the southern house mosquito.

The research team interpreted this to mean that each mosquito species has different preferred human groups, demonstrating the possibility that each species uses different chemical cues when searching for humans.

Microbes living on the skin alter components such as sweat and sebum to produce volatile compounds, and this process is involved in shaping unique body odors for each individual.

In fact, an analysis of the skin microbiome of the 119 participants identified 246 bacterial taxonomic groups, but only one species was common to all participants.

Furthermore, individuals with high and low attraction levels for each mosquito species were found to harbor different abundances of distinct bacterial taxonomic groups.

Differences according to gender were confirmed only in the yellow fever mosquito.

The attraction rate for the yellow fever mosquito averaged 91.5% for men and 87.4% for women, making it 4.1 percentage points higher for men.

However, the research team noted that while this difference was statistically significant, they could not identify which specific odors or skin microbiome characteristics of men caused this difference.

In the odor analysis, some candidate compounds associated with mosquito attraction by species were also identified. Among skin microbes, Staphylococcus epidermidis and others were found in common among participants who showed high attraction levels across all three mosquito species.

Kayla Marrero, a Ph.D. student and lead author of the paper, said that this study is the first direct comparison of how multiple mosquito species respond to the same individuals. She noted that it is significant not only for confirming the phenomenon that mosquito attraction varies by person, but also for showing the possibility that each mosquito species detects human scents differently.

(Photo: iScience, Matthew DeGennaro et al., Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.