Multimodal host recognition in mosquitoes: sensory integration, active sensing, and transmission control

Mosquito-borne pathogen transmission depends on repeated, context-dependent encounters between mosquitoes and vertebrate hosts. We synthesize evidence from sensory neurobiology, chemical ecology, vector–pathogen biology, microbiome research, and intervention studies to examine host recognition as a multistage process shaped by changing cue reliability and action-dependent sampling. Three sensory architectures can contribute to this process: feedforward multisensory integration, cross-modal gating, and closed sensorimotor feedback in which mosquito movement alters the sensory input encountered next. Host seeking progresses through overlapping phases of activation, orientation, approach, landing, probing, and feeding, with persistent internal states and learning bridging temporal gaps between cues. Infection can modify host-derived sensory signals and can also alter mosquito responsiveness, probing, feeding, locomotion, and neuromodulation. Evidence for infection-associated behavioral change spans association, causal modulation, and, in a smaller subset of systems, patterns consistent with adaptive manipulation. Sensorimotor dynamics within a host-seeking bout occur over seconds to minutes, while transmission emerges over longer epidemiological timescales. Sensory redundancy can preserve host seeking after single-pathway perturbation, and field studies show that intervention performance depends strongly on ecological context. Control approaches therefore span receptor-level mechanisms, whole-animal phenotypes, effects on mosquito–human contact, and transmission or disease endpoints. This synthesis generates testable predictions for active sensing, sensory compensation, infection-associated modulation, and the persistence of intervention effects across laboratory and field settings, and highlights unresolved sites of neural convergence as priorities for future research.