Aedes aegypti adult females are key vectors of several arboviruses and flight activity plays a central role in mosquito biology and disease transmission. Available methods to quantify mosquito flight usually require special devices and mostly assess spontaneous locomotor activity at individual level. Here, we developed a new method to determine longitudinal untethered adult A. aegypti induced flight activity: the INduced FLight Activity TEst (INFLATE). This method was an adaptation of the “rapid iterative negative geotaxis” assay to assess locomotor activity in Drosophila and explore the spontaneous behavior of mosquitoes to fly following a physical stimulus. Insects were placed on a plastic cage previously divided in four vertical quadrants and flight performance was carried out by tapping cages towards the laboratory bench. After one minute, the number of insects per quadrant was registered by visual inspection and categorized in five different scores. By using INFLATE, we observed that flight performance was not influenced by repeated testing, sex or 5% ethanol intake. However, induced flight activity was strongly affected by aging, blood meal and inhibition of mitochondrial complex I. This simple and rapid method allows the longitudinal assessment of induced flight activity of multiple untethered mosquitoes and may contribute to a better understanding of A. aegypti dispersal biology.

埃及伊蚊成虫是几种虫媒病毒的关键载体，其飞行活动在蚊子生物学和疾病传播中起着重要作用。量化蚊虫飞行的可用方法通常需要特殊的设备，并且大多会在个体水平上评估自发运动能力。在这里，我们开发了一种新的方法来确定纵向不受束缚的成年埃及埃及伊蚊诱导的飞行活动：诱导的飞行活动试验（INFLATE）。该方法是对“果蝇快速迭代负地轴性”测定法的一种改编，用于评估果蝇的自发活动并探索在物理刺激下蚊子自发飞行的行为。将昆虫放在预先划分为四个垂直象限的塑料笼子上，并通过向实验室工作台敲击笼子来实现飞行性能。一分钟后，通过目视检查记录每个象限的昆虫数量，并将其分类为五个不同的分数。通过使用INFLATE，我们观察到飞行性能不受重复测试，性别或5％乙醇摄入量的影响。但是，诱导的飞行活动受到衰老，血粉和线粒体复合体I抑制的强烈影响。这种简单而快速的方法可以纵向评估多个无系链蚊子的诱导的飞行活动，并且可能有助于更好地了解埃及埃及蚊。 分散生物学。