During the recent war intensive investigations on mosquito repellents were carried out in various countries. Much of this research involved testing large numbers of chemical compounds as possible repellents for protecting troops in mosquito-infested areas (Christophers, 1947; McCullogh and Waterhouse, 1947; Travis et al., 1949). However, interest in the fundamental problem of the nature of the stimuli which attract mosquitoes to their hosts was revived (e.g., Willis, 1947; Parker, 1948) and the results of these and other workers have shown that moisture, temperature, to some extent body odor, and carbon dioxide (for at least one species of Anopheles; van Thiel, 1947), are factors in attracting mosquitoes. Most of the evidence to date indicates that the olfactory organs of insects are located in the antennae (see reviews by Marshall, 1935, Wigglesworth, 1939, Dethier and Chadwick, 1948). Bates (1949) in reviewing the food habits of adult mosquitoes stated that the ability to orient to odors by means of the antennae “ „„ . is shared by so many different insects that it can safely be assumed to exist in mosquitoes even though in this particular case direct experimental evidence is lacking.” The following work was done to add to our knowledge of mosquito behavior by determining the sensory end-organs of A. aegypti (L.) and A. quadrimaculatus Say which receive host stimuli.
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Louis M. Roth (1951) studied this question.