Palm wines as potent attractant to mosquitoes

Abstract

Control of Anopheles vector is effective in halting malaria. Entrapping them by deceit with semiochemicals they must respond to could be sustainable control approach but poverty and other impediments prevent use of such luring strategy in Sub Saharan Africa. Elaeis guineensis could be alternative accessible and cheap unexplored source of semiochemicals for mosquitoes control. We evaluated the response of Anopheles mosquitoes to categories of palm wine. Anopheles larvae were selected from mosquito juveniles collected from egbaite. At emergence, female mosquitoes were subjected to a 2-way olfactometer to evaluate their responses to odours from 4 categories of palm wines. Fresh up-palm wine attracted 50.00 ± 5.77% of mosquitoes, its sub-category, ebacha up-wine, attracted 45 %. Fresh down-wine attracted 70 % of vectors as against 68.33 % of ebacha down-wine. The foregoing categories compared to the control attracted significantly more mosquitoes (respectively, p = 0.007; p = 0.005; p = 0.002; p = 0.001). Comparison of fresh up-wine with fresh downwine showed that significantly more mosquitoes visited down-wine (t = - 5.060, p = 0.007). Ebacha up-wine and ebacha down-wine comparison revealed that significantly more mosquitoes visited ebacha down-wine (t = - 4.950, p = 0.008). The preference indices calculated for the 4 categories of palm wine ranged from 57.27 ± 14.90 to 85.98 ± 7.73. Palm wines are attractive to Anopheles mosquitoes. Down-wine was more effective attractant. Up wine lost its activity faster than down-wine. Palm wines could sustainably be employed in malaria vector control programmes.

Keywords: Malaria/mosquito control, Anopheles, Elaeis guineensis, Semiochemicals, Palm wine, 2-way olfactometer