Monday, May 10, 2010

Common Mosquito Repellent No Longer Repels Certain Mosquitoes

Disappointing, but predictable from the science of evolution.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100506092733.htm

ScienceDaily (May 6, 2010) — Mosquitoes can develop a resistance to substances used to repel them. This has been shown for the first time in laboratory tests at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and associates in the UK.

It is the yellow fever mosquito that has developed a resistance to the mosquito repellent DEET, a substance used in mosquito repellents all over the world. In Sweden it is found in the products MyggA and Djungelolja (Jungle Oil). The capacity of mosquitoes to develop resistance has been shown to be hereditary.

"Through testing, we have found that yellow fever mosquitoes no long sense the smell of DEET and are thereby not repelled by it. This is because a certain type of sensory cell on the mosquito's antenna is no longer active" says Rickard Ignell, a researcher at the Division for Chemical Ecology at SLU in Alnarp.

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