Human-landing patterns of Anopheles dirus sensu lato (Diptera: Culicidae) in experimental huts treated with DDT or...

Anopheles dirus females landing on humans inside experimental huts treated with residual applications of DDT or deltamethrin were observed during the wet season in Pu Teuy Village, Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand. Two identical experimental huts were constructed in the fashion of typical local rural Thai homes. Pretreatment (baseline) human-landing collections (HLC) in both huts showed an early evening peak of activity between 1900 and 2000 h with no significant difference in numbers of mosquitoes captured between huts over a period of 30 collection nights. During posttreatment HLC, female mosquitoes continued to show greater landing activity inside huts fitted with insecticide-treated panels during the first half of the evening compared with the second half. A greater number (proportion) of An. dirus females landed on humans in the hut treated with deltamethrin compared with DDT. Comparing pre- and posttreatment HLC, the DDT-treated hut showed a 79.4% decline in attempted blood feeding, whereas exposure to deltamethrin resulted in a 56.3% human-landing reduction. An odds ratio was performed to demonstrate the relative probability (risk) of mosquitoes entering and attempting to blood feed in the two treated huts compared with untreated control huts. Mosquitoes were approximately 0.47 times less likely to land on humans inside a DDT-treated hut compared with the deltamethrin-treated hut. Although both chemicals exerted strong excitatory responses, DDT appears to have a more pronounced and significant (P = 0.002) effect on behavior than deltamethrin, resulting in greater movement away from the insecticide source and thus potential reduction of blood-feeding activity.