Evaluating the efficacy of biological and conventional insecticides with the new ‘MCD bottle’ bioassay
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Control of mosquitoes requires the ability to evaluate new insecticides and to monitor resistance to existing insecticides. Monitoring tools should be flexible and low cost so that they can be deployed in remote, resource poor areas. Ideally, a bioassay should be able to simulate transient contact between mosquitoes and insecticides, and it should allow for excito-repellency and avoidance behaviour in mosquitoes. Presented here is a new bioassay, which has been designed to meet these criteria. This bioassay was developed as part of the Mosquito Contamination Device (MCD) project and, therefore, is referred to as the MCD bottle bioassay. METHODS: Presented here are two experiments that serve as a proof-of-concept for the MCD bottle bioassay. The experiments used four insecticide products, ranging from fast-acting, permethrin-treated, long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs) that are already widely used for malaria vector control, to the slower acting entomopathogenic fungus, Beauveria bassiana, that is currently being evaluated as a prospective biological insecticide. The first experiment used the MCD bottle to test the effect of four different insecticides on Anopheles stephensi with a range of exposure times (1 minute, 3 minutes, 1 hour). The second experiment is a direct comparison of the MCD bottle and World Health Organization (WHO) cone bioassay that tests a subset of the insecticides (a piece of LLIN and a piece of netting coated with B. bassiana spores) and a further reduced exposure time (5 seconds) against both An. stephensi and Anopheles gambiae. Immediate knockdown and mortality after 24 hours were assessed using logistic regression and daily survival was assessed using Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS: Across both experiments, fungus performed much more consistently than the chemical insecticides but measuring the effect of fungus required monitoring of mosquito mortality over several days to a week. Qualitatively, the MCD bottle and WHO cone performed comparably, although knockdown and 24 hour mortality tended to be higher in some, but not all, groups of mosquitoes exposed using the WHO cone. CONCLUSION: The MCD bottle is feasible as a flexible, low-cost method for testing insecticidal materials. It is promising as a tool for testing transient contact and for capturing the effects of mosquito behavioural responses to insecticides.
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Short-contact assays were conducted using a similar set-up made from 1.5-L plastic bottles with the lower half removed and the open end covered with treated netting.
“Short-contact assays were conducted using a similar set-up made from 1.5-L plastic bottles with the lower half removed and the open end covered with treated netting (42).”
From Electrostatic coating enhances bioavailability of insecticides and breaks pyrethroid resistance in mosquitoes (2015) · cites this paper as [42]
The Background describes a plastic bottle with its bottom cut off and netting held over the opening, and the Methods describe short exposures using that assay. However, the paper specifies a 1-L bottle, not a 1.5-L bottle, and does not say the lower half was removed. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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- Authors
- Sternberg, E. D., Waite, J. L., & Thomas, M. B.
- Affiliations
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sternberg, Eleanore D
- Venue
- Malaria Journal
- Published
- 2014-12
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 499-499
- ISSN
- 1475-2875 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4300847
- OpenAlex
- W2135697031
- Cited by
- 34
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 2.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Malaria Journal (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission (306105)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Malaria Research and Control
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Insect Pest Control Strategies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Insect Resistance and Genetics
- Keywords
- insecticide resistance monitoring, Anopheles stephensi, Anopheles gambiae, long-lasting insecticidal nets, permethrin, Beauveria bassiana, entomopathogenic fungi, bioinsecticides, excito-repellency, WHO cone bioassay, mosquito mortality, daily survival
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Anopheles, Behavior, Animal, Biological Assay, Insecticides, Survival Analysis
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