Entomological studies to determine the effect of the physical characteristics of mosquito larval breeding water bodies and reservoir water level changes on the occurrence of Anopheles mosquito larvae were conducted in two villages at Koka reservoir in central Ethiopia between August and December 2007. Of the two study villages, Ejersa is located close to the reservoir, and Kuma is 5 km away fro...

Continuous monitoring of vector species composition, abundance, dynamics, feeding pattern, and host finding strategy is the base to determine when, what, and how control should be implemented. Thus, this study was conducted to assess entomological parameters of anopheline mosquitoes in nine villages in Seka district, southwestern Ethiopia, from June to December 2012. Mosquito collection was car...

Understanding oviposition behavior is important to behavioral and vector ecologists because of its potential use in developing vector control strategies for insect-borne infectious diseases. Our study compared the oviposition behaviors of Anopheles gambiae s.s mosquitoes from two different regions of East Africa, Mbita Point, Kenya and Ifakara, Tanzania. The work sought behavioral evidence for ...

Mosquitoes of the Anopheles gambiae complex display strong preference for human bloodmeals and are major malaria vectors in Africa. However, their interaction with viruses or role in arbovirus transmission during epidemics has been little examined, with the exception of O'nyong-nyong virus, closely related to Chikungunya virus. Deep-sequencing has revealed different RNA viruses in natural insec...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Malaria in urban and highland areas is emerging as a significant public health threat in Kenya which has seen a dramatic increase in malaria transmission in low risk highland areas. The objectives of the study were to find and incriminate potential vectors of malaria in Kibera, Nairobi. METHODS One hundred and twenty houses within Lindi area of the southern central sec...

BACKGROUND In order to improve malaria control, and under the aegis of WHO recommendations, many efforts are being devoted to developing new tools for identifying geographic areas with high risk of parasite transmission. Evaluation of the human antibody response to arthropod salivary proteins could be an epidemiological indicator of exposure to vector bites, and therefore to risk of pathogen tr...

A study was undertaken to identify the major larval habitats of the Anopheles gambiae (Giles) complex in rural Gambia. Mosquito larvae and pupae were sampled along transects and in specific habitats in the central region of the country during the rainy seasons of 1996 and 1997. The sampling showed that the major breeding sites were located on the flooded alluvial soils bordering the river. The ...

Malaria transmission varies from one area to another and there are also local difference in time and space. The objective of the study was to determine the local variability of entomological parameters namely, mosquito abundance, human biting rate (HBR), sporozoite rate for Plasmodiumfalciparum and entomological inoculation rate (EIR). The study was carried out in Rufiji District south eastern ...

The need to understand diversity in Anopheles mosquitoes to win the fight against malaria first became apparent with the paradox of ‘anophelism without malaria’, as it became evident that there is a vast diversity of Anopheles species and that not all species transmit malaria [1]. For example, in Europe it was eventually deduced that the mosquito Anopheles maculipennis existed as a species comp...

Long chain aliphatic methyl ketone series of C7-C15 were tested for repellency activity against the malaria transmitting mosquito Anopheles gambiae s.s. All methyl ketones produced a dose dependent (P < 0.001) repellency response with 2-tridecanone giving comparable protection efficacy to DEET at 10% and 1% concentrations. Aliphatic methyl ketones of C7-C10 had lower activity than those of C11-...