ESA Annual Meetings Online Program
0299 Attraction and discriminative behavior of Anopheles gambiae (Diptera: Culicidae) to the odor of some Afrotropical plants
=Mosquitoes
are attracted to different plant species in order to intake sugar. It is
assumed that sugar feeding in Afrotropical mala=ria
vectors is mediated by semiochemicals which in=turn
can be used in the development of novel sampling techniques and possibly
alternative control methods of malaria. Here we present a small simple olfactometer, which showed its efficiency in mosquito
behavior studies.
=A dual
port wind-tunnel olfactometer with pressurized=air
current was used to measure the oriented flight response of the adult
mosquitoes to plants’ volatile stimuli. A mean number of 200 <=span
style=3D'font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-ascii-t=heme-font:
major-bidi;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-hansi-theme-font:m=ajor-bidi;
mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi'>male and female adults (less than a day old=) with
no access to blood and sugar were released for each single experiment. =Consistency
between the two ports was tested by dual-blank and dual-honey experiments a=nd
the system was shown to be fairly balanced.
=Our
experiments with Anopheles gambiae in a
Y-shaped olfactometer demonstrated a preference=to a
number of common African plants. The attractive plants were Lantana camara, Parthenium hysterophorus, Senna<=/span>
didymobotrya, Senna=
occidentalis and Te=coma
stans; while=Datura stramonium,
=Our correlation analyses indicate that individuals counted in the treatment trap should have been activated by plant volatiles’ induction. =The number of activated female mosquitoes was significantly higher than males w=hen tested with different experimental plants, but no sexual difference was observed for our attracted mosquitoes to any of experimental plants.=doi: 10.1603/ICE.2016.57823
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