The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has developed repellents and insecticides for the U.S. military since 1942. A small component of this research program has aimed at the discovery of attractants that can be used to produce potent lures for haematophagous arthropods, with a primary focus on medically-important biting flies. Research on attractants in the late 1960s led to the discovery of L-lactic acid as one of the attractants for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In the mid and late 1990s, research involving multiple subjects led to the discovery of 277 compounds present on skin, and the results of this work produced lures that are highly effective at trapping Ae. aegypti in laboratory bioassays. As a result of these studies, it was discovered that some compounds on human skin inhibit the ability of mosquitoes to find hosts. These compounds are present on human skin at trace levels; however, when larger quantities of these attraction-inhibitors are presented with human odors to mosquitoes, they produce anosmia and hyposmia in test mosquitoes. This presentation will cover the USDA research to discover better mosquito attractants and novel means to deter mosquitoes from finding hosts.

Discovery of mosquito attractants and attraction-inhibitors

246th National Meeting (2013)

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