Mosquitoes are the principle disease vector of malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever, which are responsible for more than a million deaths worldwide annually. This makes controlling transmission a global health priority, and underscores the importance of understanding their behavior. Although it is known that olfaction is the main sensory modality mosquitoes use to select prey, many behavioral patterns, such as changing prey preferences, suggest that associative learning has a role in mosquito behavior. Previous research has established mosquito’s affinity for human scent and characterized their olfactory receptors, but little is known about the neural substrates and molecular underpinnings that modulate olfactory learning. To gain insight into the importance of olfactory learning, I have been introducing controlled perturbations into the larval mosquito nervous system and assaying their behavior using a classical conditioning model. This is achieved through genetic manipulation and injection of drugs with known targets. Initially, I have focused on the role of dopaminergic neurons, because they are known regulators of associative learning in other species. To this end, I have developed microinjection techniques that allow for delivery of silencing RNAs (siRNAs) to knockdown dopamine receptor expression. Using this approach, I have found that Dopamine receptor deficient animals, as well as those injected with Dopamine antagonists, are unable to learn like their untreated counterparts. Knockdown animals suffer a much higher mortality rate in survival experiments that test their ability to avoid predation, underscoring the importance of these receptors in vivo. Currently, we are using cell biological approaches to visualize the relevant neurons. Together these data show that larval mosquitoes are able to learn within days of hatching, and that dopamine plays a crucial role in facilitating aversive learning. In addition to clarifying the mechanistic basis for olfactory learning, these findings may ultimately enhance the development of vector control strategies.