The pesticides commonly used to counter the disease transmission and general nuisance threats posed by mosquitoes have human health and environmental hazards of their own. An ecologically sound alternative to the use of these chemical agents has been developed by researchers in Japan in the form of an aqueous surfactant solution that inhibits mosquito flight behavior and effectively deactivates the pests.

The surfactants make it possible to wet the hydrophobic surface of the mosquito’s body that normally repels water. Solutions of sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate significantly reduce surface tension and enable wetting the surface of the insect’s body and wings. Research published in Scientific Reports confirms that formulations with surface tension of about 30 mN/m can wet mosquitoes flying or resting on a wall, causing them to fall. Solutions with lower surface tension wetted the aerial attackers faster and over greater distances, resulting in a decrease in mosquito activity and increased death rates.

Mosquitoes can repel water dripped onto their wings but cannot repel low surface tension surfactants. Source: Kao Corporation

According to the researchers from Kao Corporation and the RIKEN Center for Brain Science, mosquitoes will not be able to readily gain resistance to this mechanism, suggesting that it could be a sustainable route to their eradication.