Is aging raw cattle urine efficient for sampling Anopheles arabiensisPatton?

Abstract

BackgroundTo ensure sustainable routine surveillance of mosquito vectors, simple, effective and ethically acceptable tools are required. As a part of that, we evaluated the efficiency of resting boxes baited with fresh and aging cattle urine for indoor and outdoor sampling of An. arabiensis in the lower Moshi rice irrigation schemes.MethodsA cattle urine treatment and re-treatment schedule was used, including a box with a piece of cloth re-treated with urine daily, and once after 3 and 7 day. Resting box with piece of black cloth not treated with urine was used as a control. Each treatment was made in pair for indoor and outdoor sampling. A 4 by 4 Latin square design was used to achieve equal rotation of each of the four treatments across the experimental houses. Sampling was done over a period of 6 months, once per week.ResultsA total of 7871 mosquitoes were collected throughout the study period. 49.8% of the mosquitoes were collected from resting box treated with urine daily; 21.6% and 20.0% were from boxes treated 3 and 7 days respectively. Only 8.6% were from untreated resting box (control). The proportion collected indoors was ~2 folds greater than the outdoor. Of all mosquitoes, 12.3% were unfed, 4.1% full fed, 34.2% semi-gravid and 49.4% gravid.ConclusionFresh and decaying cattle urine odour baited resting boxes offer an alternative tool for sampling particularly semi-gravid and gravid An. arabiensis. Evaluation in low density seasons of An. arabiensis in different ecological settings remains necessary. This sampling method may be standardized for replacing human landing catch.

Efficient attractants and simple odor-baited sticky trap for surveillance of Anopheles arabiensis Patton mosquito in Ethiopia

“…This result revealed that cow urine is equally effective as an attractant for both resistant and susceptible Anopheles arabiensis. This finding is supported by the results of a study conducted to evaluate cow urine for outdoor sampling, which foundthat significantly more adult Anopheles arabiensiswere collected in the resting box baited with cow urine than in the unbaited box [24,25]. In another similar study, cow urine was effective as an oviposition attractant for Anopheles gambiae in the first four days [13].…”

Malaria mosquitoes acquire and allocate cattle urine to enhance life history traits

“…Host-seeking female An. arabiensis are attracted to the VOCs of fresh and 24 h aged urine (this study, Kweka et al, 2009;Mahande et al, 2010), which is different from that found for other dipterans, including tsetse and tabanids, which prefer VOCs of older aged urine (Mihok and Mulye, 2010;Okech and Hassanali, 1990;Vale et al, 1988). The overall complexity of VOCs increases as the urine ages, with phenol and phenolic derivatives as the predominant VOCs (this study, Okech and Hassanali, 1990;Baldacchino et al, 2013).…”

“…While blends of phenolic VOCs are sufficient to elicit attraction in tsetse and tabanids (Baldacchino et al, 2013;Madubunyi et al, 1996;Mihok and Mulye, 2010;Vale et al, 1988), these fail to do so in An. arabiensis, as corroborated by (Mahande et al, 2010) and (Kweka et al, 2009). In contrast, the blends of antennally-detected VOCs that attract female An.…”

“…With the rapid increase in ammonia, correlating with the decline in organic nitrogen, alkalophilic microbes, many of which produce compounds toxic to mosquitoes, thrive (Kilande et al, 2016), which may be a lead cause of why female An. arabiensis are preferentially attracted to urine aged for 24 h or less (Kweka et al, 2011;Mahande et al, 2010).…”

“…species complex, An. arabiensis, to fresh and aging cattle urine (Kweka et al, 2009;Mahande et al, 2010), is intriguing. Cattle urine is a resource rich in nitrogenous compounds, with urea making up 50-95 % of the total nitrogen in fresh urine (Dijkstra et al, 2013;Kilande et al, 2016).…”