Chemicals that disrupt host-seeking in insects

Authors: Bernier, Ulrich

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/2/2015
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has developed repellents and insecticides for the U.S. military since 1942. A small component of this research program has been aimed at the discovery of attractants that can be used to produce potent lures for haematophagous arthropods, especially medically important biting flies. Research on attractants in the late 1960s led to the discovery of L-lactic acid as one of the attractants for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In the mid and late 1990s, research involving multiple human volunteers led to the report of 277 compounds present on skin. From the compounds identified in this research, mosquito attractant lures were developed and shown to be effective at trapping Ae. aegypti in laboratory bioassays. An unexpected finding from these studies occurred in 2000. It was discovered that some compounds made inhibited mosquito attraction to hosts that they would normally be attracted towards. These heterocyclic nitrogen compounds are present on human skin at trace levels; however, when larger quantities of these attraction-inhibitors are presented concurrently with human odors to mosquitoes in an olfactometer, they produce anosmia (inability to detect odors) and hyposmia (decreased ability to detect odors) in the test mosquitoes. This presentation will cover the research that led to this discovery of a novel means to deter mosquitoes from finding hosts.