Evaluating Mosquito Attractants in Huts

We introduced the blend into two experimental huts in which there were single human volunteers sleeping under non-insecticidal bed-nets, such that in each hut, the blend and the human volunteer were positioned four meters apart. Two light traps were set up to collect mosquitoes inside each hut: one of the light traps near the human volunteer, and the other near the blend. In another two experimental huts, we set up a similar arrangement with single human volunteers but without introducing the blend. Instead, a blank unbaited MM-X® was set up at a similar location as in the first two huts, and similarly two light traps were set up in these huts. The volunteers remained in the same huts but the synthetic blend was rotated between the huts every night so as to account for any positional bias on mosquito catches. Again, for each experimental night mosquitoes entering the huts were trapped between 7.00pm and 7.00am. The mosquitoes were sorted into different taxa and counted daily. These experiments were repeated for a total of sixteen nights.