In a third-floor University of Washington laboratory hidden behind a fragrant row of cedar trees, Clément Vinauger and Chloé Lahondère are interrogating mosquitoes. Because the mosquitoes can answer them only in a handful of ways—pricking their antennae, beating their wings—the researchers talk to the insects through a $2,000 machine called the Arena.
Vinauger, a soft-spoken, 31-year-old French entomologist, lifts the lid off a plastic case to show me 18 wriggling Aedes aegypti mosquitoes glued to what look like long needles by the back of their thoraxes. These are the same mosquitoes scientists believe are spreading the Zika virus throughout the Americas. The species, along with the fear, panic, and disease it carries throughout the hemisphere, is not native to Washington State. Vinauger and Lahondère’s lab is just one of two places in Seattle you can encounter them—the other is the Center for Infectious Disease Research in South Lake Union…
