A sanitary safe method for screening mosquito repellents on Anopheles pseudopunctipennis and Aedes aegypti

Abstract One of the main vectors for malaria in Latin-America is Anopheles pseudopunctipennis (Theobald), whereas Aedes aegypti (L.) is the primary vector of dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and chikungunya viruses. The use of repellents is recommended as personal protection method against these vectors (or mosquitoes), however there are very few studies evaluating the effect of repellents on An. pseudopunctipennis. The use of a Petri dish to study repellence has been applied by several authors on flies, cockroaches, kissing bugs and mosquitoes, being a valuable technique for species that are difficult to breed under laboratory conditions, such as An. pseudopunctipennis, which could be infected by parasites. In the present study we evaluated the repellence of the essential oil of E. nitens, its main component (1,8-cineole) and the commercial repellent DEET on An. pseudopunctipennis and Ae. aegypti females using the plaque repellency method coupled to EthoVision XT10.1 video-tracking software. Repellent effect and locomotor activity were studied through a repellence index (RI) together with an axis constructed from the behavioral variables obtained using the tracking software. DEET repellent effect was observed at 0.01mg/mL for Ae. aegypti and 0.01 and 0.1mg/mL for An. pseudopunctipennis. In addition, the essential oil showed significant repellence at 1 and 10 mg/mL for Ae. aegypti, and 1, 5, 10 and 25 mg/mL for An. pseudopunctipennis, no significant response was detected to 1,8-cineole at any concentration for neither of the two species. This is the first study that evaluates these compounds on An. pseudopunctipennis females and quantify their effects on the activity of both species.