A mosquito’s whining buzz can be as irritating as its bite. But to a Mosquito of the opposite sex, the high pitched hum is the sound of romance.
Skeeters create their distinctive sound by beating their wings at a number of beats per second. The wing vibrations produce sound waves that resonate in their bodies and outside, too. Now, scientists have discovered that some mosquitoes can adjust the speed of their wing beats and change the accompanying sound to attract a potential mate. In a recent study, male and female Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes raised the pitch, or highness or lowness, of their whine when they came within earshot of the opposite sex. By matching the rate at which they beat their wings – as well as their flight tone – the love – struck skeeters were able to perform a singing duet before mating.
To harmonize, the skeeters had to adjust the pitch of their whine to include a quite tone at 1200 hertz. This is several times higher than the skeeters’ normal hum. A single female Mosquito, for example, generally hums loudest at 400 hertz. Male Mosquitoes hum loudest at a tone of hertz. In the study, Lauren Cator of cornell University and her colleagues fastened Mosquitoes to flexible wires, and then flew the insects past stationary, or still, mosquitoes. The researchers recorded the insects flight tones with a specialized microphone.as a male and female flew by each other, their flight tones fell in sync, producing a faint harmonic note that the he researchers picked up.

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