Mosquito Behaviour in Relation to Disease Eradication Programmes

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Abstract
At the heart of the current program for world-wide malaria eradication lies the assumption that the human domestic environment is the focus of a critical proportion of the vector population. The validity of this assumption can be established only by final success. There is reason to believe that residual insecticides may themselves affect the balance between intra-and extra-domiciliary transmission. There is thus a continuing need for evaluation not only of the immediate effect of insecticides but of their long-term effect on mosquito populations. The occurrence of a major anoph-eline-borne human virus disease in Africa further emphasises the need. Our present, largely subjective, picture of mosquito behavior is quite inadequate to meet this need. It is suggested that in the immediate future the most profitable fields for exploration may be those on the boundary between behavior and physiology, for example, the nature and inheritance of irritability and modified phototropism, the comparative physiology of engorgement and blood meal metabolism, "physiological rhythms" and their inheritance and, possibly, the estivation of tropical mosquitoes. Were these better understood it is likely that many apparently unrelated phenomena would come together in a coherent pattern.

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