Data for: Cyphers and cycles – a chemical basis of the differential attraction of mosquitoes to human odor

Anthropophilic mosquitoes, such as the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, not only exhibit a robust host preference for humans, but are also known to favor certain individuals over others, which has been attributed to variations in individual body odor. The underpinning chemical drivers, however, remain largely unidentified. Here, we assessed the differential attractiveness of 42 female participants to host-seeking Ae. aegypti, demonstrating that pregnancy or menstrual cycle phase significantly contributed to the individual level of attractiveness. Chemical and electrophysiological analyses of whole body odor samples identified 27 volatile organic compounds potentially involved in regulating the level of human attractiveness to mosquitoes. Behavioral assays further demonstrated that 1-octen-3-ol – present in the body odor of highly attractive participants and pregnant individuals – and the overall blend ratio of volatile organic compounds are sufficient to modulate mosquito preferences. Our findings suggest that multiple chemical motifs contribute to the heterogeneity in human attractiveness to mosquitoes.

This dataset contains five individual files containing information on:
(1) Participant data and the relative amount of the selected 27 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the human odor samples collected from each participant (humandata_relamounttargetVOCs.csv)
(2-5) Behavioral data of the four two-choice assays testing different synthetic human odor blends (2choice_doseresponse.csv, 2choice_increase1octen3ol.csv, 2choice_vhighlowaverage.csv, 2choice_27vsOmondi.csv). Note that trials with no or just one mosquito responding were removed