AN IMPROVED METHOD FOR DETECTING SUBSTRATE PREFERENCES SHOWN BY MOSQUITOS THAT EXHIBIT SKIP OVIPOSITION

A new method is described for detecting and characterizing oviposition -substrate preferences among insects (e.g. Aedes aegypti) that customa rily disperse the eggs of a single batch among several sites (i.e. tha t exhibit 'skip oviposition'). The method entails recording the distri bution of eggs by individual females provided initially with an array of identical sites, thus eliminating possible effects of position pref erence and female density, and then placing one test site into the arr ay. A preferred substrate can be identified promptly in this way witho ut having to count eggs.