Critical analysis of the mosquito repellency evoked by the 10-34 kHz recorded animal sounds: The case of the African female A. gambiae s.s

Animals sounds have been mimicked in electronic mosquito repellents (EMRs) and exploited as a tool in the control of malaria by targeting the vector, the female The claimed mosquito repellency of 30.3 % due to Anti-Pic, an electronic mosquito repellent, had failed to be confirmed in subsequent studies. However, studies on mosquito startle based on initial behavioural activities without an attractant yielded 34.12 % repellency elicited by the 10-34 kHz recorded sound of . Other malaria intervention measures involving the use of chemicals have been impeded by the pathogen and vector resistance hence slowing down the rate of decline of malaria morbidity and mortality. The research thus focused on the analytical study of the African female repellency evoked by the 10-34 kHz recorded animal sound of male mosquito, and . Landing rates and behavioural startle responses of the mated female on food attractant evoked by the individual sound of the male mosquito, , and were determined and analysed. The male and female were bred and reared under controlled laboratory conditions of 60-80 % humidity, 25±2 °C temperature with equal light-darkness hour cycle in KEMRI, entomology laboratories. Isolation of the male and female mosquitoes from a swarm was based on physical features and affinity to blood meal. The sounds of and were acquired and the sound of the male were recorded from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) entomology laboratory, Kisumu. The sounds were filtered into 10-34 kHz frequency band and analysed using Avisoft-SAS LAB Pro version 5.2 and Raven Pro 1.5 software. The sound of was also studied. A fighto-Y glass cage well designed into control, neutral and treatment chambers was used in the study. Both control and treatment chambers were connected to blood meal maintained at 38.60°C. The treatment cage was also connected to the source of sound and a swarm of 50 female mosquitoes into the neutral cage and observed for 1,200 s. The sounds of the and yielded 2.10, 2.20 and 3.00 landings/minute respectively associated with adverse behaviour. The protection index (PI) anchored on the number of mosquitoes that landed, probed and fed on the blood meal in the treatment and neutral cage for the sounds of the and was 42.73 %, 40.24 % and 10.64 % respectively. The sound of the was characterised by steady and minimally dipped pulsate acoustic power with wide bandwidth. The protection index achieved by the sound of the male did not differ significantly from the sound of (0.1740 > 0.05), though differed significantly from the sound emitted from the Anti-Pic EMR (p = 5.3440 x 10).