BACKGROUND Insecticide treated nets (ITNs) have been proved as one of the most effective ways of reducing malaria morbidity and mortality in children and pregnant women. Proper use and care of insecticide treated nets reduce malaria health risk to children. OBJECTIVE To determine maternal use of insecticide treated nets in the prevention of malaria among children under five years in Nyamira d...

Landscape-scale intensification of individual crops and pesticide use that is associated with this intensification is an emerging, environmental problem that is expected to have unequal effects on pests with different lifecycles, host ranges, and dispersal abilities. We investigate if intensification of a single crop in an agroecosystem has a direct effect on insecticide resistance in a special...

A new test system that includes an excito-repellency test box, test procedures, and statistical treatment of data is described. The method consists of enclosing 25 mosquitoes in an exposure chamber lined with insecticide-treated or untreated (control) test papers. Each chamber has a single portal for mosquitoes to escape to a receiving cage, and numbers escaping are manually recorded at 1-min i...

Variation in plant quality and natural enemy abundance plays an important role in insect population dynamics. In manipulative field studies, we evaluated the impact of varying irrigation levels and insecticide type on densities of Lygus hesperus Knight and the arthropod predator community in cotton. Three watering levels were established via irrigations timed according to three levels of percen...

Insecticide-treated mosquito nets have an impact on mortality and morbidity in young children under controlled conditions. When integrated into larger control programs, there is the danger that rates of regular retreatment of the nets with insecticide will drop, greatly limiting their effectiveness as a public health intervention. In Bagamoyo District, Tanzania, rates of retreatment dropped sig...

BACKGROUND Bed bugs are a public health concern, and their incidence is increasing worldwide. Bed bug infestations are notoriously difficult to eradicate, further exacerbated by widespread resistance to pyrethroid and neonicotinoid insecticides. This study evaluated the efficacy of the newly developed fungal biopesticide Aprehend™, containing Beauveria bassiana, against insecticide-resistant be...

Fitness-related costs of evolving insecticide resistance have been reported in a number of insect species, but the interplay between evolutionary adaptation to insecticide pressure and variable environmental conditions has received little attention. We provisioned nymphs from three German cockroach (Blattella germanica L.) populations, which differed in insecticide resistance, with either nutri...

28 Research on threats to pollination service in agro-ecosystems has focused primarily on 29 the negative impacts of land use change and agricultural practices, such as insecticide use, on 30 pollinator populations. Insecticide use could also affect the pollination process, through non31 lethal impacts on pollinator attraction and post-pollination processes such as pollen viability or 32 pollen...

Toxicological assays measuring mortality are routinely used to describe insecticide response, but sub-lethal exposures to insecticides can select for resistance and yield additional biological information describing the ways in which an insecticide impacts the insect. Here we present the Wiggle Index (WI), a high-throughput method to quantify insecticide response by measuring the reduction in m...

Numerous studies have shown that German cockroaches, Blattella germanica (L.), are often resistant to insecticides in settings where insecticides have been used extensively in the past. We have now examined resistance in German cockroaches collected in homes in which insecticide usage has been minimal, and resident-initiated at best. Resistance to propoxur, chlorpyrifos, pyrethrins, permethrin,...