The same signaling networks we study in birds are ancient enough to interrogate in insects — where they drive the behaviors that make some insects dangerous. We combine field sampling, genomics, transcriptomics, and metagenomics to understand how signaling and the microbiome shape disease-carrying insects.
Malaria vector biology
Our flagship program asks what makes a mosquito a dangerous — and controllable — vector, along two threads. Behavior and its molecular basis: why some Anopheles seek humans while close relatives don’t, and why some shift to outdoor feeding that slips past bed nets. We mapped the chemosensory machinery of host preference across antennae, maxillary palps, and proboscis, contrasting anthropophilic An. coluzzii with zoophilic An. quadriannulatus (Athrey et al., BMC Genomics 2017; Parasites & Vectors 2020; J. Medical Entomology 2021). Population genomics for control: vector-control campaigns leave a deep imprint on mosquito effective population size (Athrey et al., PLoS Genetics 2012; Hodges, Athrey et al., Evolutionary Applications 2013), a framework we extend to Culex under insecticide management (Huang, Athrey et al., Frontiers in Genetics 2023) and to the genomics of insecticide resistance, validating metabolic-resistance genes in Culex and Aedes (Huang et al., BMC Genomics 2023; PLoS NTD 2024).
Insect microbiomes
We study insects as reservoirs and couriers of microbes, where the gut microbiome links insect biology to public health: house flies as vectors of foodborne pathogens and antimicrobial resistance through food-animal production (Shahanaz et al., J. Food Protection 2025), and antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella enterica recovered directly from house-fly intestinal tracts on broiler farms (Zwally et al., Letters in Applied Microbiology 2025).