Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:31:45.672Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Studies of the Responses of the Female Aëdes Mosquito. Part III. The Response of Aëdes aegypti (L.) to a Warm Body and its Radiation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2009

D. G. Peterson  and
A. W. A. Brown
D. G. Peterson
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
A. W. A. Brown
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

1. A warm object is more attractive to the female yellow-fever mosquito than a cooler object, such that the numbers touching a ball warmed to 100° or 110°F. were twice as great as those touching a ball 20°F. cooler. This attractiveness was reversed when the temperature of the warmer ball reached 120°F.

2. This response is eliminated by the insertion of an air-tight window of thallium bromoiodide, despite the fact that it allows almost all of the radiation to filter through. It is therefore concluded that heat convection, which is eliminated by the air-tight window, is the factor which makes a warm object attractive to the mosquito.

3. The several faces of a warm cube, differing in their radiant emissivity but identical as to surface temperature, exhibited attractancies to Aëdes which were not significantly different one from another (except in the case of black enamel, which will be explained in a later paper). These results may be interpreted to indicate that radiation plays no part in the attraction of the mosquitos to the warm face.

4. It is concluded that the failure of Parker (1948) to obtain a positive response of Aëdes mosquitos to a warm dry object was due to the fact that his apparatus allowed only the radiant heat but not the convective heat to reach the insects.

5 Since the response of Aëdes aegypti to heat is eliminated by a window transparent to infra-red radiation, the theory of olfaction proposed by Beck and Miles (1947) evidently has no application to this species of mosquito.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Bulletin of Entomological Research , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , November 1951 , pp. 535 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1951

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beck, L. H. & Miles, W. R. (1947). Some theoretical and experimental relationships between infra-red absorption and olfaction.—Science, 106, p. 511.Google Scholar
Brown, A. W. A., Sarkaria, D. S. & Thompson, R. P. (1951). Studies of the responses of the female Aëdes mosquito. Part I : The search for attractant vapours.—Bull. ent. Res., 42, pp. 105–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christophers, Sir S. (1947). Mosquito repellents: being a report of the work of the Mosquito Repellent Inquiry, Cambridge 1943–5.—J. Hyg., 45 pp. 176–231.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howlett, F. M. (1910). The influence of temperature upon the biting of mosquitoes.—Parasitology, 3, pp. 479–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mather, D. (1947). Statistical analysis in biology.—New YorkIntersci. Publ., 267 pp.Google Scholar
Parker, A. H. (1948). Stimuli involved in the attraction of Aëdes aegypti L. to man.—Bull. ent. Res., 39, pp. 387–397.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wigglesworth, V. B. & Gillett, J. D. (1934). The function of the antennae in Rhodnius prolixus (Hemiptera) and the mechanism of orientation to the host.—J. exp. Biol., 11, pp. 120–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar