By Mar Centenera

Buenos Aires, Feb 8 (EFE).– The Aedes aegypti mosquito is considered “a perfect virus-spreading machine” by scientists at Argentina‘s Center for Plagues and Insecticides Research, or Cipein, which studies the insect’s preferences and phobias to fight it and contain dengue, Zika and Chikunguña epidemics.

Females of the species, able to lay an average of 100 to 300 eggs, bite repeatedly, usually early in the morning or late in the afternoon, feeding on blood, and if the person bitten is sick, the mosquito carries the virus to the next person they bite.

In the absence of vaccines, researchers focus on controlling the vector, a task to which a dozen researchers devote their lives at this laboratory on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, working among rows of transparent boxes filled with Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in all their stages of life: eggs, larvae and adults.

“One difficulty in controlling the mosquito is the need to fight it in the water, where the larvae are, and in the air, where the adult mosquitoes are,” biochemist and Cipein director Eduardo Zerba told EFE.

In the laboratory, which is managed by the Defense Ministry and works with the World Health Organization in trying to control plagues, researchers have developed a compound “able to simultaneously kill adults and larvae” that will soon be used across the country, Zerba said.

Zerba and his team have specialized in developing control tools, but they also work on chemical ecology, researching the insects’ sensory perception driven by smells.

To achieve their goals, the scientists seek out “which compounds cause a sensorial response in the mosquitoes’ antennas,” either to be attracted or repelled, researcher Paula Gonzalez said.

If the compound that attracts the insects is used in a container with water, it becomes more competitive than others for egg-laying females, increasing the efficacy of an insecticide applied in the same place.

The same method, using the sensorial behavior of mosquitoes, can be used to create repellents to prevent bites. EFE