Mosquitoes infect hundreds of millions of people every year with a variety of deadly viruses, making them the most dangerous animal on earth. However, humans are not equally attractive to mosquitoes, leaving some individuals more vulnerable to mosquito borne-illness than others. The infectious behavior of the mosquito is dependent on multiple sensory cues, with odor amongst the most crucial cues for human host detection. Human odor is strongly influenced by an individual’s skin microbiome, as the human body would be largely odorless if not for the volatile organic compounds produced by the commensal bacteria on the human skin. Multiple studies have shown that skin microbiota play an important role in generating volatile compounds from sweat. Using a uniport olfactometer to measure mosquito attraction of Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus, and Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes. 119 human subjects were assayed and the microbiome and volatilome of each subject was sampled in the same session to capture an odor and microbial profile for each individual. To determine what strains of bacteria were associated with high attraction and low attraction individuals we used random forests as well as a mixed effects model. We identified chemical compounds and strains of bacteria that are differentially abundant between subjects. By examining the interaction of attraction, volatilome, and microbiome across subjects, this study aims to determine how the bacteria on our skin affect mosquito attraction.
