James Moloney: The secret life of mosquitoes

This piece was written in the fall of 2025 by GRAD 5144 (Communicating Science) student Thao Vu as part of an assignment to interview a classmate and write a news story about their research.

“The secret life of mosquitoes” sounds like the latest hit sitcom on reality TV — but for James Moloney, a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech, it is a research passion for the greater good of humanity. At the Fralin Institute of Life Sciences, Moloney observes and studies the secret life of mosquitoes every day to understand their habits and find an environmentally friendly and effective method to drive down invasive mosquito populations that cause harm to humans.

    “Not so fun fact about mosquitoes,” shares Moloney, “they're the world's deadliest animal and kill more than 700,000 people a year.”

    Population control of mosquito species, therefore, is crucial to public health and safety. That is a goal that Moloney has been relentlessly pursuing for the past two years, starting immediately after his undergraduate years at Truman State University. Now Moloney studies the interactions between mosquitoes and plants, focusing on two types of plants — goldenrod and fly poison — whose nectar is particularly attractive to mosquitoes. Moloney is testing the hypothesis that goldenrod plants are supporting high mosquito populations. He is also interested in mosquitoes’ potential roles in pollinating the fly poison plants — an act that is the equivalent of self-extermination, since mosquitoes die in less than two days after consumption of the fly poison nectar, long before they can have the chance to lay eggs.

    Every day, Moloney and his team study a live population of several thousand mosquitoes in one of Virginia Tech’s cutting-edge labs. His tasks are never boring, though, and include working in the dark of night, inside a drainage ditch by a highway intersection, sucking out the mosquitoes with an air pipe. 

    Moloney also feeds and breeds his mosquitoes. Their favorite foods are cotton balls soaked in sugar water and animal blood — including lukewarm blood from lamb, cow, or chicken, depending on the mosquito species. Human sweat is also extremely appetizing to mosquitoes.

    Moloney admits that he has taken quite a liking to his mosquitoes, and they to him. 

    “I always say that the mosquitoes see me as like their dad or something,” he chuckles. “I never get bitten.” This fun fact only applies to the population grown and kept at the lab, though. Out in Virginia Beach, where Moloney sometimes conducts fieldwork, he gets bitten a lot, he says.

    Moloney believes that his research on non-intrusive methods to drive down mosquito species through knowledge of their interaction with plants will have wider implications, not only to mosquito species native to Virginia, but also species around the world. For instance, in Africa, where malaria has been a chronic roadblock to development and public health, Moloney’s method of targeting mosquito diets and using their natural food sources to control populations could serve as an effective and environmentally friendly way to mitigate disease.

    Moloney enjoys working on the tiny, but important, interactions between mosquitoes and their environment and is excited about the potential implications of his work — even if it sometimes makes him a little itchy.