Effect of different type of plant material in the water towards the development of dengue vector aedes aegypti (diptera: culicidae)

The development of Aedes aegypti can be affected by many factors including physical, chemical and biological factors. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of different types of plant material contained in water in artificial and natural containers towards the development of Aedes aegypti as well as the wing size and wing shape characterisation of the dengue vector. This is an experimental study design with three replications where each container was filled with a total of 30 eggs exposed with different plant materials (twigs, dry leaves and dry grasses), followed by three different doses (1.7g/l, 2.5g/l and 3.3g/l). Observation on the development days, the number of larvae at each four instar stages and the pupation period were observed daily until adult emergence. The findings revealed that dry leaves result in the fastest embryonic development in achieving 50% adult emergence. For wing size, eleven landmarks on each wing were measure using Dino-Lite while the differences in wing shape characters were visualised using TpsDig 1.40 and MorphoJ software. The results show that higher dose of dry grasses contributed to larger wing size and the wing shape character was more separated when larvae were exposed to higher dose of plant materials. The relationship for the development of Aedes aegypti as well as the wing size and wing shape character between artificial and natural container were compared. The natural container for both doses results higher percentage of adult’s emergence compared to artificial container. The pupation period in the artificial container is shorter for both dose level compared to natural container. The wing size measurement of an adult Aedes aegypti emerging from coconut shell was highly significant (p<0.05) than that of those emerging from the plastic container.