Vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, impose major global health and economic burden, with more than 3.9 billion people at risk of being infected with these potentially deadly pathogens. The growing resistance of these pathogens or their arthropod vectors, which transmit the pathogen to the human or animal host, to current disease-control strategies raises the urgent need for new effective solutions. Our recent findings on an uncharted aspect of vector-borne diseases—the chemical cues governing transmission-related vector behaviour—point to novel strategies for disrupting pathogen transmission. We will expose the molecular mechanism underpinning the male mosquito pheromone involved in swarming/mating we recently discovered (Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2020), which should offer new control strategies that destabilize swarming/mating.