Neuroanatomical basis of sexual dimorphism in the mosquito brain

Jing Li; Austin Merchant; Suyue Zhou; Tao Wang; Xuguo Zhou; Chuan Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105255

Neuroanatomical basis of sexual dimorphism in the mosquito brain

iScience. 2022 Oct 2;25(11):105255. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105255. eCollection 2022 Nov 18.

Authors

Jing Li^{1

2}, Austin Merchant³, Suyue Zhou¹, Tao Wang^{1

4}, Xuguo Zhou³, Chuan Zhou^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
² Institute of Molecular Physiology, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Shenzhen 518132, China.
³ Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546, USA.
⁴ Department of Life Sciences, Yuncheng University, Yuncheng 044000, China.

Abstract

Female but not male mosquitoes are vectors for multiple deadly human diseases including malaria, dengue, yellow fever, and West Nile virus. However, the underlying neural substrates of sexually dimorphic behaviors remain largely unknown in mosquitoes. In this study, we found striking sexual dimorphism in brain regions in two major disease vectors, Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus, through voxel-wise comparison of the whole brain. Female-enlarged regions include those associated with chemosensation and vision, while male-enlarged regions are linked to hearing and memory. However, some brain regions associated with vision and memory are sexually dimorphic in A e . aegypti but not C x . quinquefasciatus. As the first global voxel-based comparative neuroanatomical analysis of mosquito brains between sexes, this study not only sheds light on the neural substrates underlying sex-specific behaviors, but also identifies regions of interest for future research to disrupt female-specific behaviors critical to disease transmission.

Keywords: Animals; Behavioral neuroscience; Ethology.

Associated data

Dryad/10.5061/dryad.51c59zwbq