The same signaling networks we study in birds are ancient enough to interrogate in insects \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our flagship program asks what makes a mosquito a dangerous \u2014 and controllable \u2014 vector, along two threads. Behavior and its molecular basis<\/strong>: why some Anopheles<\/em> 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<\/em> with zoophilic An. quadriannulatus<\/em> (Athrey et al., BMC Genomics<\/em> 2017<\/a>; Parasites & Vectors<\/em> 2020<\/a>; J. Medical Entomology<\/em> 2021<\/a>). Population genomics for control<\/strong>: vector-control campaigns leave a deep imprint on mosquito effective population size (Athrey et al., PLoS Genetics<\/em> 2012<\/a>; Hodges, Athrey et al., Evolutionary Applications<\/em> 2013<\/a>), a framework we extend to Culex<\/em> under insecticide management (Huang, Athrey et al., Frontiers in Genetics<\/em> 2023<\/a>) and to the genomics of insecticide resistance, validating metabolic-resistance genes in Culex<\/em> and Aedes<\/em> (Huang et al., BMC Genomics<\/em> 2023<\/a>; PLoS NTD<\/em> 2024<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em> 2025<\/a>), and antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella enterica<\/em> recovered directly from house-fly intestinal tracts on broiler farms (Zwally et al., Letters in Applied Microbiology<\/em> 2025<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The same signaling networks we study in birds are ancient enough to interrogate in insects \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1518","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1518\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/giriathrey.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Insect microbiomes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n