Adult female mosquitoes undergo dramatic changes in behavior as they cycle between different parts of their reproductive cycle. These changes in behavior are coordinated by hormonal signals associated with different stages of ovarian development and with their blood feeding status. At different stages of the cycle, they respond to different cues in their environment in order to seek out nectar, hosts, or oviposition sites. This coordination between ovarian development, nutritional state, and behavior is known as the gonotrophic cycle and allows mosquitoes to produce batches of many eggs at a time. We will present results of a single-cell sequencing experiment in the optic lobes of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes at different stages of this cycle. We will examine how gene expression changes in specific cell types correlate with changes in responsiveness to cues associated with nectar sources, hosts, and oviposition sites.
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