Diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET) is currently the most widely used insect repellent, however there is concern about DEET’s toxic effects. There are several alternative repellents on the market but DEET still provides the most complete protection from insect pests. The current study examined the effect of catnip essential oil, osage orange essential oil, and elemol, the major constituent of osage orange essential oil, on 20 female Culex pipiens mosquitoes in a 9x60-cm static-air glass olfactometer. Each treatment was tested at 3 doses, 157, 78, and 16 µg/cm2, and then compared to DEET repellency values. Experimental design was a completely randomized design with three replications of the treatments. % Repellency values were recorded 15 minutes after mosquito introduction and mosquito contact on the treated surface was recorded at six different time points over 3 hours. Analysis of variance was performed to identify significant difference between treatments and dose-response. Pair-wise comparisons of mosquito contact data were completed using Fishers Exact test.
Species 1: Diptera Culicidae Culex pipiens
Keywords: repellents
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