ArticlePloS one2020
Why do biting horseflies prefer warmer hosts? tabanids can escape easier from warmer targets.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- No armor is perfect: detecting hotspots of parasitic horse fly attacks on black caiman through 3D modeling and citizen science.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2026Article
- Zebra stripes: the questions raised by the answers.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Global hotspots and academic trends of vector-borne diseases in the order Diptera (Arthropoda: Insecta): a bibliometric visualisation.Folia parasitologica · 2025Article
- Impact of climate change and variability on the occurrence and distribution of Trypanosoma vectors in The Gambia.Parasitology research · 2025Article
- Sunlit zebra stripes may confuse the thermal perception of blood vessels causing the visual unattractiveness of zebras to horseflies.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- A new argument against cooling by convective air eddies formed above sunlit zebra stripes.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Blood-sucking horseflies (tabanids) prefer warmer (sunlit, darker) host animals and generally attack them in sunshine, the reason for which was unknown until now. Recently, it was hypothesized that blood-seeking female tabanids prefer elevated temperatures, because their wing muscles are quicker and their nervous system functions better at a warmer body temperature brought about by warmer microclimate, and thus they can more successfully avoid the host's parasite-repelling reactions by prompt takeoffs. To test this hypothesis, we studied in field experiments the success rate of escape reactions of tabanids that landed on black targets as a function of the target temperature, and measured the surface temperature of differently coloured horses with thermography. We found that the escape success of tabanids decreased with decreasing target temperature, that is escape success is driven by temperature. Our results explain the behaviour of biting horseflies that they prefer warmer hosts against colder ones. Since in sunshine the darker the host the warmer its body surface, our results also explain why horseflies prefer sunlit dark (brown, black) hosts against bright (beige, white) ones, and why these parasites attack their hosts usually in sunshine, rather than under shaded conditions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.