Periyasamy Senthamarai Selvan¹ , Arulsamy Jebanesan¹ , Jayapal Subramaniam¹ , Kadarkarai Murugan² , Samivel Kanthammal¹ , Mayakrishnan Vijay¹ , Govindaraj Divya³

1 Division of Vector Biology and Control, Department of Zoology, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, 608 002, India
2 Division of Entomology, Department of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, 641 046, India
3 Division of Bioprospecting, Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (ICFRE), Coimbatore, 641 002, India
Author    Correspondence author
Journal of Mosquito Research, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 18   doi: 10.5376/jmr.2017.07.0018
Received: 24 Aug., 2017    Accepted: 30 Sep., 2017    Published: 13 Oct., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Selvan P.S., Jebanesan A., Subramaniam J., Murugan K., Kanthammal S., Vijay M., and Divya G., 2017, Influence of meteorological variables on mosquitoes breeding in Theni District, Tamilnadu, India, Journal of Mosquito Research, 7(18): 142-153 (doi: 10.5376/jmr.2017.07.0018)

The ecology, distribution and abundance of various mosquito vectors is important in the determination of disease prevalence in disease endemic areas. The present study is aimed to determine the distribution and abundance of mosquitoes in different habitats of Theni district, Tamilnadu, India. The influence of weather on mosquito populations was studied. All the possible permanent and temporary water bodies were surveyed in selected sites during dusk and dawn hours. Ten localities were randomly selected and sampled twice per month with 15 days interval for a period of six months, from July to December 2015. A total of 1226 individuals of 21 species belonging to 7 genera were identified. Among the collected specimens the Culex species were predominant in polluted water habitat followed by Aedes in fresh water. The high number of Shannon-Weiner diversity index was recorded for Culex (0.1596) and Aedes (0.1564) species, followed by Simpson’s dominance index (0.1270) for Culex. The findings of this study highlight the importance of improperly maintained drainages, containers and unused things in study sites are engaged to mosquito development. This will be essential for designing and implementing mosquito control.

Mosquitoes diversity; Temperature; Physico-chemical factors; Theni; Tamilnadu; India