electro magnetic field pest repeller

Very Small Temperature gradients in the air as attractant to Blood Sucking Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are dangerous to the human race. They transmit deadly diseases like malaria and dengue haemorrhagic fever to humans and have caused many deaths. Mosquitoes are most dangerous when they need to blood-feed. Only adult females blood-feed in order to develop eggs for reproduction. Female mosquitoes begin to develop host-seeking behavior as they approach their adulthood.

Man is most vulnerable in the dark, makes perfect blood-meal hosts where females can readily feed upon. Sleeping humans must be protected from blood-seeking female mosquitoes. Ideally, they should be exterminated before they can even have a chance to blood-feed, to prevent the females from developing eggs. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to attract blood-seeking mosquitoes. Most nocturnal flying insects are attracted to visible light, but blood-seeking mosquitoes are not. Bug zappers which employ weak UV light as a lure can attract and exterminate most night flyers. However, they cannot lure blood-seeking mosquitoes.

To attract blood-seeking mosquitoes, their host seeking behavior must be first elucidated. The host-seeking behavior of blood-seeking female mosquitoes had remained largely unknown until recently. Electrophysiological studies revealed that blood-seeking female indeed respond to very small temperature fluctuations in the air caused by movements or body heat of a blood-meal host metres away. These small-scale temperature fluctuations cannot be detected by naked human olfactory senses. Their presence can only be confirmed with a cold wire anemometer linked to a digital computer. The study of such temperature fields belonged to thermal fluid sciences, an academical field most people find threatening and intimidating.

Adult females have thermo-sensitive olfactory receptors located on their antennae to collect these air-borne thermal signals under dim lighting conditions and based on the signals they would head for the direction with the highest signal concentration whom, of course, will be the prey itself. However, they are not sensitive to the absolute temperature changes in the ambient surroundings.

Mosquito Death Traps

The sole function of AeroHeart found in the mosquito death trap is to generate huge quantities of macro-scaled temperature fluctuations continuously to be injected into the surrounding temperature field. These artificial air-borne signals mixes and masked off the natural temperature fluctuations released by a hot blooded host. Instead any nearby adult females will be lured by the overwhelming artificial temperature signals towards the awaiting trap. Numerous of our field tests show that all mosquitoes or insects with the ability to probe for temperature-fluctuations during host-seeking will be lured to the trap. Mosquitoes belonging to the Aedes, Anopheles and Culex species, midges and other biting insects are among the catch. Our previous field results showed that, when the catch rate of the trap surpasses the reproductive rate of the mosquitoes residing within the test site, the test site will be virtually mosquito-free approximately forty days later.

Click to see the typical of a week's catch caught with a mosquito death trap.

For further information enta@enta.com.sg

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