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Background  The immediate aim of our study was to analyse the behaviour of the malarial mosquito  Anopheles coluzzii  ( An. gambiae  species complex) near a human host with the ultimate aim of contributing to our fundamental understanding of mosquito host-seeking behaviour and the overall aim of identifying behaviours that could be exploited to enhance sampling and control strategies.    Results  Based on 3D video recordings of individual host-seeking females in a laboratory wind-tunnel, we found that despite being a nocturnal species,  An. coluzzii  is highly responsive to a visually conspicuous object, but only in the presence of host-odour. Female mosquitoes approached and abruptly veered away from a dark object, which suggests attraction to visual cues plays a role in bringing mosquitoes to the source of host odour. It is worth noting that the majority of our recorded flight tracks consisted of highly stereotyped ‘dipping’ sequences near the ground, which have been mentioned in the literature, but never before quantified.    Conclusions  Our quantitative analysis of female mosquito flight patterns within ~1.5 m of a host has revealed highly relevant information about responsiveness to visual objects and flight height that could revolutionise the efficacy of sampling traps; the capturing device of a trap should be visually conspicuous and positioned near the ground where the density of host-seeking mosquitoes would be greatest. These characteristics are not universally present in current traps for malarial mosquitoes. The characterisation of a new type of flight pattern that is prevalent in mosquitoes suggests that there is still much that is not fully understood about mosquito flight behaviour.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1609-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Seeing is believing: the nocturnal malarial mosquito Anopheles coluzzii responds to visual host-cues when odour indicates a host is nearby