Aqueous infusions of decayed paper birch, Betula papyrifera (Marsh), are shown to contain an oviposition attractant for the tree-hole mosquito Aedes triseriatus (Say) in laboratory experiments. The attractive material is proved to be volatile and soluble in pentane. p -Cresol is shown to be an active component of this extract. Further experiments demonstrate that contact of ovipositing mosquitoes with p -cresol odor alone suffices to induce significantly increased oviposition. Trapping experiments show that p -cresol solutions attract significantly more mosquitoes, both male and female, than does distilled water alone.
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Bentley et al. (1979) studied this question.