So I wake up to go to work in the morning. I do my routine and get dressed. I walk outside, fire up the bike, and start putting on my riding gear. The air is pretty vacant at first, but by the time I take off, I’m fighting off swarming mosquitos comparable to hornets attacking from a nest you’ve disturbed. They seem to just chill out on the ground or somewhere until I walk outside, or get back home in the evening, and then they fly in from every direction. If I get in the car, the ones that don’t get in before I shut the door will fly against the glass until I take off. How in the hell do these blood-thirsty parasites find me so easily? Do they see my motion as I walk by? Do they smell the aroma of mammalian blood? Perhaps they have a tiny alarm system attached to my door. How do they do it?
I believe it’s some combination of Carbon Dioxide and body heat…
Interesting. Maybe I should work on holding my breath. I’m guessing the bike emits more carbon dioxide than I do though, so it would be pointless.
Mosquitos almost refuse to bite me. Everyone around me can be biten several times and at the most I’ll have one bite. I have a condition called COPD, which means that I exhale very small amounts. Could that be the reason? Is my breathing so meager that I’m going under the mosquitos radar? 
Because they zero in on carbon dioxide, I have heard (but not yet tested, probably will this summer) that one way to keep the mosquitoes off during an outdoor party is to set a cinder block in a far corner of your yard with a few pounds of dry ice on it (the cinder block will keep the dry ice from “burning” the grass). As the dry ice sublimates into CO[sub]2[/sub], the mosquitoes will be drawn to it, and hopefully your guests will be left alone.
I’m pretty sure the various mosquito species have all evolved an AHunter3 sensor, which registers ever more strongly the closer a given lifeform approximates AHunter3. You, for example, end up on the menu because of a sufficient number of gross similarities between you and me.
I believe I’ve read that it’s only the females that bite and that they can detect temperature variations to a thousandth of a degree. Also, reportedly, a diet rich in garlic may help ward them off.
I know you’re correct about only the females biting. They need the blood for their eggs, not themselves. I didn’t know about the garlic though. I can ward off mosquitos and vampires at the same time. I can’t stand things that suck blood.
They respond to CO2 &/or ather attractants.
Google for “mosquito control or traps.”
Lots of products.
A study published in Scientific American magazine showed that the “hairs” on a mosquito’s snout can sense warm, moist air. The flying pattern of a seeking mosquito, once it enters the sweaty heat plume you exude, was compared to that of a torpedo or heat-seeking missile. She’ll go straight until she no longer senses the plume, then she turns until she re-enters the column of warm air. Then she goes straight again. It’s a slow zigzag that eventually takes her to your skin.
If you look down a west-facing brick wall in the late afternoon, you’ll see skeeters flying close to the wall, continually bumping their tiny heads against the bricks. That’s their guidance system misleading them. If a lady skeeter can’t find a blood meal, she can’t lay eggs. However, the successful ones lay enough eggs to make up for the ones who die before laying eggs.