Several UC Davis mosquito researchers are featured in the KQED science article on “How Mosquitoes Use Six Needles to Suck Your Blood,” which includes an embedded video of mosquito bites. The National Public Radio's health blog, “Shots,” includes a shorter version.

Spotlighted are parasitologist and entomologist Shirley Luckhart, professor in the UC Davis School of Medicine's Department of Medical Microbiology and immunology and the Department of Entomology and Nematology; medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro, professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology (PMI), UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and an associate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor in the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology; virologist Lark Coffey of PMI; and UC Davis post-doctoral researcher Young-Moo Choo of the Leal's lab who discovered a receptor by dissecting mosquitoes' mouthparts and genetically testing them.

"Many of the shots were from UC Davis labs," Lanzaro noted. Medical entomologist Yoosook Lee of PMI provided her arm for the Anopheles gambiae feeding shots in the Lanzaro lab.

The KQED piece, drawing widespread interest, is the work of Gabriela Quirós, coordinator producer of Deep Look, KQED Science.

"As summer approaches, we can look forward to picnics, hiking, camping and the mosquito bites that come with spending time outdoors," began Quirós. "It's a good thing you can't really see what that mosquito is doing when it bites — you probably wouldn't want to watch as it buries six needles into you. But scientists have been figuring out all the bloody details. And it's not just for idle curiosity: mosquito bites are more dangerous to humans than any other animal bite. While female mosquitoes — only females bite us — are drinking our blood to grow their eggs, they can leave behind viruses and parasites that cause diseases like West Nile, Zika, malaria and dengue."

A mosquito has more than 150 receptor proteins on its antennae and proboscis that enable it to find a victim "or figure out if the water is nutritious enough to lay eggs in," Quirós wrote.

Luckhart said that the mosquitoes detect body heat and substances called volatile fatty acids. “The volatile fatty acids given off by our skin are quite different," Luckhart told Quirós. "They reflect differences between men and women, even what we've eaten. Those cues are different from person to person. There's probably not one or two. It's the blend that's more or less attractive.”

“Mosquitoes don't find the blood vessel randomly," Leal said, pointing out that the receptors respond to chemicals in the blood.

The receptor that the Leal lab discovered is called 4EP, and may lead to drug companies developing new mosquito repellents.  “First they'd need to find a repellent against the receptors," Choo told Quirós. "Then they'd treat people's skin with it. When the mosquito tried to penetrate the skin, it would taste or smell something repulsive and fly away.”

Lanzaro said that the latest malaria statistics--more than 300 million people contracted malaria in 2015, and some 635,000 died--are "probably an underestimate."