Journal of Mosquito Research 2015, Vol.5, No.13, 1-5
1
Research Report Open Access
Pattern of Human-biting Activity of
Aedes aegypti
L. and
Aedes albopictus
Skuse
in a Garden Locale from City of Kolkata, India
Goutam Chandra
1
, Indranil Bhattacharjee
1
, Rita Banerjee
2
, Srabani Talukdar
3
, Ruby Mondal
3
, Amiya Kumar Hati
3,
1. Department of Zoology, The University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India
2. Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi - 110016, India
3. Medical Entomology Unit, Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata – 700073, West Bengal, India
Corresponding author email
Journal of Mosquito Research, 2015, Vol.5, No.13 doi: 10.5376/jmr.2015.05.0013
Received: 28 Apr., 2015
Accepted: 08 Jun., 2015
Published: 06 Aug., 2015
Copyright
©
2015 Chandra
et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Chandra G., Bhattacharjee I., Banerjee R., Talukdar S., Mondal R and Hati A.K., 2015, Pattern of Human-biting Activity of
Aedes aegypti
L. and
Aedes
albopictus
Skuse in a Garden Locale from City of Kolkata, India, Journal of Mosquito Research, Vol.5, No.13 1
-
5 (doi
Abstract
In a yearlong study, centering a garden in Kolkata possible competitive displacement of populations of
Ae. aegypti
and
Ae.
albopictus
was suggested (Gilotra et al., 1967). After about 20 years, a comparative 24 h man-biting activity of
Ae. aegypti
and
Ae.
albopictus
mosquitoes was investigated in the same garden from September 1986 to August 1987. During day light hours, altogether
248
Ae. aegypti
mosquitoes were collected off human baits, of which 77 (31.04%) and 171 (68.95%) off indoor and outdoor baits
respectively. The corresponding figures for
Ae. albopictus
were 867 [183 (21.10%) at indoors and 684 (78.89%) at outdoors]. Both
species of mosquitoes were found to be attracted to human baits both at indoor and outdoor, throughout the day, with the peak hour of
biting activity of
Ae. aegypti
between 8 and 9 a.m. [60 (24.19%)]followed by another peak during 5-6 p.m. [40 (16.13%)]. Peak
activity of
Ae. albopictus
was observed between 5 and 6 p.m. (135 i.e. 15.5%). For both the species the peak biting activity was
found in the month of July [
Ae. aegypti,
52 (20.96%) and
Ae. albopictus,
264 (30.4%)]. Altogether 36 and 13
Ae. aegypti
were caught
off man-baits at indoors and outdoors respectively beyond day light hours and the corresponding figures for
Ae. albopictus
were 56
and 34 respectively. This infers a possible competitive displacement of
Ae. aegypti
populations by the populations of
Ae. albopictus.
Keywords:
Man-landing activity;
Aedes aegypti
;
Aedes albopictus
;
Retrospective study
1 Introduction
The genus
Aedes
is very large and comprises of more
than one thousand species (Chandra, 2000). But, so far
the medical importance is concerned,
Aedes aegypti
L.
is the most important species being the vector of
several deadly arboviruses like dengue, DHF, yellow
fever, chikungunya, West Nile etc. (Duane,
2011).
Another species i.e.
Ae. albopictus
Skuse has also
been recognized important as vector of the viruses like
dengue and chikungunya (Hochedez et al. 2006), West
Nile, yellow fever, St Louis encephalitis (Randolf and
Hardy, 1998) etc. There are evidences of interspecific
competition between these two species.
Ae. albopictus
displaced
Ae. aegypti
in some places like areas of
Calcutta (Brunette, 1907) and Hawaii (Usinger,
1944). On the other hand
Ae. aegypti
displaced
Ae.
albopictus
in some places like Kuala Lampur (Stanton,
1920) and urban Bangkok (Rudnick, 1965). Senior
White (White, 1934) first reported the changes in the
relative proportions of these two mosquito species in
Calcutta, India. Wattal (Wattal, 1964) found higher
number of
Ae. aegypti
in Calcutta but higher number
of
Ae. albopictus
in its outskirts. Chandra (1994)
reported that in a two year long study in the urban
Calcutta, out of 13,956 indoor-resting mosquitoes of
different species collected, 137 (1.0%) was
Ae.
aegypti
but no
Ae. albopictus
was found. According to
Gilotra et al. (1967), when he took a comparative
account between
Ae. aegypti
and
Ae. albopictus
,
98.8% of the larval specimens collected from urban
premises of Calcutta and reared to adults were
Ae.
aegypti
, whereas in an urban garden (The Marble
Palace, situated in Central Calcutta) densities of
Ae.
aegypti
were only 37.3%, indicating that in certain
situations
Ae. albopictus
could spread its population
taking environmental advantages.
After about 2 decades of the previous observation
made on larval surveillance from all possible breeding
places and by placing ovitraps (Gilotra et al., 1967),
we conducted a yearlong man-biting study during
1986-87 in the same city garden. The present
communication is a retrospective yearlong longitudinal
