Re: Mosquito larvae in pitchers - any conclusions?
Hi All,
It's nice to see that someone is interested in our research! However, I'm afraid that we have only made limited progress since the sticky was posted, due to a hugely underwhelming response from growers who were willing to participate in our survey! We only got one volunteer in the end, which is not enough to run a scientific study. Plus, my workload in the last few months of 2009 was so heavy that I pretty well disappeared off the face of the earth for a while. However, life has now returned to normal and the research is progressing. For reasons outlined above, we're focussing on wild plants now, and it appears that larvae of Aedes albopictus (the No. 1 dengue vector in West Malaysia) have a tough time surviving in Nepenthes pitchers, but it is not impossible for them to do so. We're about to embark on some more experiments over the next few months to try to work out why they don't like Nepenthes pitchers, even though they occur in the same habitats.
An interim conclusion, which is subject to change at any time, is that Nepenthes pitchers are not a significant brood site for Aedes albopictus at the present time. However, we are always interested to hear if any of you have mosquitoes breeding in your pitchers, and if you'd like us to ID them for you, we'd be happy to (as long as you live in Malaysia). We'll keep it anonymous if you prefer, as well.
On a different note, I have several research students commencing new ecological projects on Nepenthes this year and these are all based on wild plants, so we should be able to make faster progress with our research in 2010. At least that's the plan....
Cheers,
Charles
PS. If you have access to the website for the journal "New Phytologist", you can see our latest research article in the "early view" section.
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