Household sweet waste's extracts: Potential man-made nectar sources for dengue vectors in nature

Nur Khairatun Khadijah, Meli (2017) Household sweet waste's extracts: Potential man-made nectar sources for dengue vectors in nature. [Final Year Project Report] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In nature, adult mosquitoes typically utilize nectar, which is not always available, as their main energy source, but they can switch to other as yet unidentified sugary fluids. These include Aedes vectors that commonly use man-made containers as their major habitat, but can colonize any items replenished by rainfall. Contemporary lifestyles of human, with their associated unwillingness to consume leftovers and improper disposal of waste, have resulted in the disposal of huge amounts of waste into the environment at time when collection frequency is reducing. Such refuse often contains unfinished food items, many of which contain sugar and some of which can collect water from rain and produce juices or fed upon by other animals and generate holes. Despite evidence that mosquitoes can feed on semi-liquids or decaying fruits and that Aedes larvae can thrive in organic waste material-resembling containers, the capacity of organic waste materials to accumulate rainwater. Also, the impacts of sweet waste fluids on dengue vectors are unknown. Through a field survey and laboratory bioassays, we investigated the abundance of sweet leftovers at garbage sites, and the rainwater retention capacity of some organic materials. We also checked whether the extracts from some familiar sweet home waste impact key components of vectorial capacity of Aedes aegypti. It was found that sweet products with leftovers are considerably prevalent in garbage. When exposed under rains, food items (Banana, Sweet Potato and Sweet Milk can) retained water. For both males and females, maintenance on BAK extract resulted in marked survival levels that were similar to those seen with SUG. Sweet waste extracts provided better substrates for survival compared to water, but this superiority was mostly seen with BAK. Females maintained on BAK, YOG, and BAN exhibited shorter response times to a host compared to their counterparts maintained on SUG. The levels of egg production were equivalent in waste extract- and SUG-fed females. The findings presented here illustrate the potential of sweet waste-derived fluids to contribute to the vectorial capacity of dengue vectors and suggest the necessity of readdressing the issue of waste disposal, especially that of unfinished sweet foods. Such approaches can be particularly relevant in dengue endemic areas where rainfall is frequent and waste collection infrequent.

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