This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher in D'Alga.

Got a minute?

Ever lit a citronec handle to ward off mosquitoes, only to have them appear in droves?

Well, believe it or not, you may have actually been attracting the bugs.

Because while high concentrations of those pine and lemon-scented chemicals might repel mosquitoes,

at low concentrations, they lure the bloodsuckers in.

Audrey Odom, who studies mosquitoes at Washington University, calls it the

Chanel hypothesis. Too much perfume is awful, but a little is pretty nice.

Plants take advantage to that to advertise their nectar, because no mosquitoes don't live on blood alone.

But here's where things get weird. Plasmodium, the malaria

parasite, also manufactures these alluring odor molecules called terpines. It does so using a chloroplasts like organelle, like the one plants

used to capture sunlight. The Malaria parasites version can't trap light, but it can still

manufacture plant perfume. The study appears in the journal M bio.

The parasites produce these scents in the lab and mosquitoes are attracted to them.

The only question left for Odom and or colleagues is whether these chemicals also appear in the breath of infected humans.

If they do, she says, the goal is to build a quick breathalyzer test for malaria,

instead of the blood test used today which would attract doctors

to a patient in need before the next mosquito comes to bite.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American 60 60 Second Science, I'm Christopher Intagnata.