Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Columbia University
Title: Regulation of innate behaviors in mosquitoes
Abstract: Understanding how internal physiological states regulate complex behaviors remains a central problem in neuroscience. In mosquitoes, these state-dependent behavioral shifts are unusually dramatic: a single mating event permanently alters a female's receptivity, and the otherwise powerful drive to seek human hosts can be completely suppressed under specific physiological conditions. These extreme transitions in feeding motivation and mating behavior make mosquitoes a "high-contrast" system for understanding how neural circuits integrate internal signals to control innate behaviors. We use multidisciplinary approaches, including molecular genetics, neurobiology, pharmacology, physiology, behavioral analysis, and evolutionary perspectives, to investigate how internal state signals regulate the expression of these innate behaviors. Although hardwired neural circuits provide the basic framework for behavior, encoding sensory responses to cues like human odor or humidity, peptidergic neuromodulators determine when and how these behaviors are executed, ensuring that female mosquitoes hunt humans only when they require a blood meal and seek oviposition sites only when ready to lay eggs. My laboratory combines cutting-edge behavioral analysis, pharmacological manipulations, and genome editing to study host-seeking and mating behaviors directly in the mosquito species evolutionarily specialized to perform them. We have identified key signaling pathways regulating host seeking, blood feeding, and mating, and are mapping and manipulating the anatomical circuits through which these signals act, allowing us to link molecules, cells, and behavior. Beyond advancing basic neuroscience, this work has significant public health relevance. As invasive mosquito species expand into new regions and spread pathogens such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, identifying the signals and cells controlling feeding and mating provides new, highly specific targets to disrupt reproduction and host interactions and to prevent disease transmission.
