Characterizing larval breeding sites: chemical volatiles in Rabai,
Kenya
Chemical volatiles released from a larval breeding site could act as
olfactory cues for mosquitoes during oviposition (Afify & Galizia,
2015), yet the volatile profiles of wild larval breeding sites have
rarely been examined. We attempted to describe the volatile profile in
larval breeding sites in Rabai, Kenya. In brief, we collected water
samples from a subset of larval breeding sites (Table 1) and extracted
the volatiles into an absorbent with a steady airflow. The captured
volatiles were examined by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS)
at Yale West Campus Analytical Core. We then identified and quantified
each compound by mapping the GC-MS peaks to a reference library. The
technical details were described in the Appendix. Due to the sparsity of
compounds in the final dataset, we did not perform statistical analysis
but instead summarized the compound concentrations using a heatmap.