Research in my lab focuses on how mosquitoes regulate their reproductive development in response to seasonal cues. This is important because in the spring, summer and early fall, female Northern house mosquitoes transmit West Nile virus when they bite humans, horses and wildlife and use the protein from vertebrate blood to lay eggs. However, in the late fall and winter, female mosquitoes enter a reproductive arrest called diapause where they feed only on plant nectar which they convert to fat. Male mosquitoes do not enter diapause, but research in my lab is showing that they change the composition of their ejaculate in response to seasonal cues which is critical because diapausing females have to store and maintain the male's sperm for 4-8 months. Additionally, we have shown that female mosquitoes use their circadian clock genes to distinguish long summer days from short winter days. Current research is focusing how the circadian clock in mosquitoes is connected to the hormonal regulators of diapause. We are also characterizing the role that specific male-derived seminal fluid proteins that males produce in the summertime in promoting female host seeking, blood-meal processing and egg-laying, and the role of seminal fluid proteins that males produce in the fall and winter play in allowing females to store sperm, live longer and combat pathogen attacks.