Skrillex song spoils mosquito attacks and mating according to scientific study / Boing Boing

New study finds Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" track reduces mosquito success in foraging, host attack and sexual activity activities Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads dengue, chikungunya, Zika fever, Mayaro and other dreaded diseases. According to researchers at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and their colleagues, everything rests on this bass. From their scientific article published in the magazine Acta Tropica:

Sound and reception are essential for the reproduction, survival and maintenance of the population of many animals. In insects, low frequency vibrations facilitate sexual interactions, while noise disrupts the perception of congenital and host signals. Despite evidence that mosquitoes respond to sound frequencies beyond fundamental ranges, including songs, and that men and women must struggle to harmonize their flight tones, the behavioral impacts of music as control targets remain unexplored. In this study, we examined the effects of electronic music (Scary Monsters and Skrillex Nice Sprites) on foraging, host attacks, and sexual activities of the Aedes aegypti dengue vector. The adults were presented with two sound environments (music off or music on). Discrepancies in patterns of attendance, blood supply and copulation were compared between environments with and without music. Ae. Aegypti females kept in the environment without music started home visits earlier than those in the environment with music. They visited the host much less frequently under the activated music conditions. Women exposed to music attacked guests much later than their unexposed peers. The frequency of blood work was lower when the music was played. Adults exposed to music copulated much less often than their counterparts kept in an environment where there was no music. In addition to providing an overview of Ae's hearing sensitivity. aegypti, our results showed the vulnerability of its vector capacitance features essential to electronic music. The observation that such music can delay the attack of the host, reduce the blood supply and disrupt the mating provides new avenues for the development of measures protection and personal control based on music against diseases transmitted by Aedes.

"The electronic song" Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites "reduces the attack of the host and the success of mating in the vector of dengue Aedes aegypti. " (Acta Tropica via EDM.com)

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