Mosquitoes are attracted to dark objects and slow down when they get within about 40 centimeters, but the visual variable alone is insufficient. Without other perceptions (e.g. body odor, humidity, heat) mosquitoes often flew away even after approaching their target. “We interpret the movement away from the target as rejection of it in the absence of essential cues—such as body odor, humidity, and heat—to induce landing and blood feeding.”
Mosquitoes can detect carbon dioxide concentrations as low as 0.1 percent and that their detection range extends to approximately 50 centimeters from the source. In presence of a source of carbon dioxide, mosquitoes normally flying at 0.7 m/s enter within a radius of about 40 centimeters of the carbon dioxide source, suddenly slow to 0.2 m/s, and begin swaying erratically without a clearly observed direction.
With both visual and CO2 perceptual input, mosquitoes began to circle around the target, and significantly more mosquitoes concentrate near the target than when just one variable is present.
Once in direct contact with the host, cues like skin odor, heat, and humidity aid the mosquito in landing and choosing a spot to probe for capillaries.
Very interesting. Of course, they are not really identifying controlled variables since they aren’t testing for them. As noted in their abstract, they are trying to identify “how visual and other sensory cues guide mosquitoes to their targets…”. That is, they are identifying variables that they see as the causes of mosquito behavior. The authors note this later in their paper where that note that the “learned forces [in their model of mosquito behavior] represent different responses to visual and CO2 cues .”. So, what they are seeing is the behavior of mosquitoes in response to stimuli (visual and chemical). And since they are finding a clear stimulus-response relationship between these variables we can be pretty sure (based on our understanding of PCT and a careful reading of all of Powers’ and my descriptions of “the behavioral illusion” ) that these stimulus variables (dark versus light target and CO2 concentration at target) are – or are closely related to variables that are being controlled. So, once you cut through all S-R and Bayesian junk you can see that this research could provide a good basis for a start at research aimed at identifying the controlled variables around which the behavior of mosquitos is organized.
But of course they are. If there were one mosquito, you would see it. CO2 and dark color (and a headlike shape helps), are variables because they vary them. The mosquitoes’ ability to control landing and seeking a capillary varies accordingly. The authors did not test for mosquitoes’ control of drawing blood by means of landing and seeking a capillary, but no one who had ever swatted at a mosquito and found it persistent could doubt that this is a CV. Just as landing and seeking a capillary are examples of control, so also is finding a target on which to land and seek a capillary. Block both variables, and the mosquito looks for those variables elsewhere. (Other variables were discussed as well.)
The cloud of mosquitos over a nice dark CO2-breathing head is a Bayesean result of individual control, just as the arcs and rings in the CROWD demo are Bayesean results of individual control—Bayesean in that the location of any given agent is probabilistic at any given moment including when the last one has stopped..
It would be possible to constrain the environment around the target agent, the ‘speaker’, so that approach was possible only through radial tunnels. You would see radial lines rather than rings and arcs. By varying the tunnel widths you could determine the proximity CV precisely, even in so impoverished an environment as compared to that of the mosquito.
You could perhaps show that the paths and/or the ultimate destinations of the agents were deterministic with a map correlating starting positions with ending positions on successive runs.