Mosquito Host-Seeking Diel Rhythm and Chemosensory Gene Expression is Affected by Age and Plasmodium Stages

Malaria parasites can affect vector-related behaviours, increasing transmission success. Using Anopheles gambiae and Plasmodium falciparum, we consider the effect of interaction between infection stage and vector age on diel locomotion in response to human odour and the expression of antennal chemosensory genes. We demonstrate age-dependent behavioural diel compartmentalisation by uninfected females. Infection disrupts overall and diel activity patterns compared with age-matched controls. Mosquitoes carrying transmissible sporozoites are more active, shifting activity periods to coincide with human host availability, in response to human odour. Older, uninfected females reduce activity during their peak host-seeking period in response to human odour. Age- and infection stage-specific changes in odour-mediated locomotion coincide with altered transcript abundance of select chemosensory genes providing a possible molecular mechanism regulating the behaviour. Our results support the hypothesis that vector-related behaviours of female mosquitoes are altered by infection stage and further modulated by the age of the vector, and have important implications for malaria transmission and disease dynamics.

A Preliminary Investigation of Interspecific Chemosensory Communication of Emotions: Can Humans (Homo sapiens) Recognise Fear- and Non-Fear Body Odour from Horses (Equus ferus caballus)

Mammalian body odour conveys cues about an individual’s emotional state that can be recognised by conspecifics. Thus far, little attention has been paid to interspecific odour communication of emotions, and no studies have examined whether humans are able to recognise animal emotions from body odour. Thus, the aim of the present study was to address this question. Body odour samples were collected from 16 two-year-old thoroughbred horses in fear and non-fear situations, respectively. The horse odour samples were then assessed by 73 human odour raters. We found that humans, as a group, were able to correctly assign whether horse odour samples were collected under a fear- or a non-fear condition, respectively. Furthermore, they perceived the body odour of horses collected under the fear condition as more intense, compared with the non-fear condition. An open question remains, which is whether humans could simply distinguish between little versus much sweat and between high intensity versus low intensity or were able to recognise horses’ fear and non-fear emotions. These results appear to fit the notion that the ability to recognise emotions in other species may present an advantage to both the sender and the receiver of emotional cues, particularly in the interaction between humans and domesticated animals. To conclude, the present results indicate that olfaction might contribute to the human recognition of horse emotions. However, these results should be addressed with caution in light of the study’s limitations and only viewed as exploratory for future studies.

Chemical signatures of human odour generate a unique neural code in the brain of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

A globally invasive form of the mosquito Aedes aegypti specializes in biting humans, making it an efficient vector of dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and chikungunya viruses. Host-seeking females strongly prefer human odour over the odour of non-human animals, but exactly how they distinguish the two is not known. Vertebrate odours are complex blends of volatile chemicals with many shared components, making discrimination an interesting sensory coding challenge. Here we show that human and animal odour blends evoke activity in unique combinations of olfactory glomeruli within the Aedes aegypti antennal lobe. Human blends consistently activate a ‘universal’ glomerulus, which is equally responsive to diverse animal and nectar-related blends, and a more selective ‘human-sensitive’ glomerulus. This dual signal robustly distinguishes humans from animals across concentrations, individual humans, and diverse animal species. Remarkably, the human-sensitive glomerulus is narrowly tuned to the long-chain aldehydes decanal and undecanal, which we show are consistently enriched in (though not specific to) human odour and which likely originate from unique human skin lipids. We propose a model of host-odour coding wherein normalization of activity in the human-sensitive glomerulus by that in the broadly-tuned universal glomerulus generates a robust discriminatory signal of the relative concentration of long-chain aldehydes in a host odour blend. Our work demonstrates how animal brains may distil complex odour stimuli of innate biological relevance into simple neural codes and reveals novel targets for the design of next-generation mosquito-control strategies.

Human odour thresholds are tuned to atmospheric chemical lifetimes

In this study, the odour thresholds (OT) and atmospheric lifetimes (AL) were compared for a suite of volatile organic compounds. It was found that odour threshold, as determined by the triangle bag method, correlated surprisingly well with atmospheric lifetime for a given chemical family. Molecules with short atmospheric lifetimes with respect to the primary atmospheric oxidant OH tend to be more sensitively detected by the human nose. Overall the correlation of odour threshold with atmospheric lifetime was better than with mass and vapour pressure. Several outliers from the correlations for particular chemical families were examined in detail. For example, diacetyl was an outlier in the ketone dataset that fitted the trend when its more important photolysis lifetime was included; and similarly, the relatively low odour threshold of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) was interpreted in terms of uptake by vegetation. The OT/AL relationship suggests that OH rate constants can be used as a first-order estimate for odour thresholds (and vice versa ). We speculate that the nose's high sensitivity to chemicals that are reactive in the air is likely an evolved rather than a learned condition. This is based on the lack of dependence on ozone in the aliphatics, that the anthropogenically emitted aromatic compounds had the worst correlation, and that OCS had a much lower than predicted OT. Finally, we use the OT/AL relationships derived to predict odour thresholds and rate constants that have not yet been determined in order to provide a test to this hypothesis. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Olfactory communication in humans’.

Odour Based Human Identification and Classification using Neural Networks

Biometrics permits an individual to be authenticated and identified by computer systems following on a set of verifiable and identifiable data that are precise and unique in nature. This mechanism constitutes a cutting-edge method of identifying an individual since it precisely establishes more explicit and direct connection with humans than mere passwords since biometrics tend to use measurable behavioral and physiological characteristics of human. In this paper, a framework for human identification is proposed distinctively based on specific human odour features. 15 samples of female and male human odour are collected from different age groups, only 15 effective Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are chosen. In this paper, several diverse functions of neural network activation are tested such as Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation, Gradient descent backpropagation, and Resilient backpropagation. Besides, numerous neural network topologies are tested by means of variety hidden layers and different number of neurons and. Different energy functions were tested TAN- Sigmoid transfer, Linear transfer, and LOG- Sigmoid transfer. Considering the obtained results, employing two hidden layers with more neurons in the hidden layers- to be specific: 15 neurons in every layer- has yielded better accuracy in performance with an accuracy rate of 100%. The unsurpassed framework for algorithm learning to be used for human identification can be backpropagation learning algorithm named the Levenberg-Marquardt. The best function for activation established in this paper is the function of TANSigmoid transfer. The performance accuracy consistency in recognizing human can be enhanced using a big number of study samples.

Effects of Handling Missing Values of VOCS Gases Emitted From Human for Human Detection

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of replacing missing values of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) that represent gases emitted from human on the accuracy of classifying individual person. These missing values will be replaced with three possibilities, which include 0, 1, and Random number between 0 and 1. The effects of using these predefined values on the classification accuracy are investigated by conducting experiments that involve applying a list of classification methods to classify 15 humans using human odour. Each person is characterized by their own pre-selected 15 gases emitted from their sweats. In this paper, we also study and determine the minimum number of gases that is required to produce acceptable results to correctly classify an individual person based on the gases emitted from their bodies. Based on the results obtained from the conducted experiments, the maximum and minimum allowable numbers of missing gases in human odour samples in reference to human emitted gases are 4 and 3. The best accuracy result when missing values are introduced in the odour dataset is the ensemble Bagged Trees.

ODOUR STUDY WITH QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS IN VARIOUS DISTRICTS OF RIGA

Different emission sources of odours become increasingly important environmental problem which may have a negative impact on human health and quality of life. Human odour perception may be subjective, however on odour perception threshold is considered to be the odorant concentration where at least half of odour assessor’s group members confirm the existence of odour, and then it is 1 OUE /m3. Nowadays more and more advanced technologies are used to measure odour concentration. Olfactometer Scentroid SM100 allows users to accurately quantify ambient odour concentration in field. Also this equipment allows to collect source samples and analyze odour in a laboratory. Odour study in 2016 and 2017 with field olfactometer Scentroid SM100 and gas analyzer Gasmet DX-4030 in districts of Riga indicates that the highest concentrations of odour are in Bolderaja, Sarkandaugava, Kundzinsala, Mangalsala, Milgravis and Vecmilgravis. Study indicates that the highest odour concentrations, especially among producing companies can reach up to 6-7 odour units (OUE/m3), however gas analyzer Gasmet DX-4030 indicates oil products or carbon dioxide.

Can malaria parasites manipulate the odour-mediated host preference of their mosquito vectors?

Malaria parasites can manipulate mosquito feeding behaviours such as motivation and avidity to feed on vertebrate hosts in ways that increase parasite transmission. However, in natural conditions, not all vertebrate blood-sources are suitable hosts for the parasite. Whether malaria parasites can manipulate mosquito host choice in ways that enhance parasite transmission toward suitable hosts and/or reduce mosquito attraction to unsuitable hosts (i.e. specific manipulation) is unknown. To address this question, we experimentally infected three species of mosquito vectors (Anopheles coluzzii, Anopheles gambiae, and Anopheles arabiensis) with wild isolates of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, and examined the effects of immature (oocyst) and mature (sporozoite) infections on mosquito behavioural responses (activation rate and odour choice) to combinations of calf odour, human odour and outdoor air using a dual-port olfactometer. Regardless of parasite developmental stage and mosquito species, P. falciparum infection did not alter mosquito activation rate or their choice for human odours. The overall expression pattern of host choice of all three mosquito species was consistent with a high degree of anthropophily, with both infected and uninfected individuals showing higher attraction toward human odour over calf odour, human odour over outdoor air, and outdoor air over calf odour. Our results suggests that, in this system, the parasite may not be able to manipulate the early long-range behavioural steps involved in the mosquito host-feeding process, including initiation of host-seeking and host orientation. Future studies examining mosquito host-feeding behaviours at a shorter range (i.e. the “at-host” foraging activities) are required to test whether malaria parasites can modify their mosquito host choice to enhance transmission toward suitable hosts and/or reduce biting on unsuitable hosts.