ENTOMOLOGICAL SURVEY OF MOSQUITOES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF LYMPHATIC FILARIASIS IN Biase Cross River State, Nigeria

This work was carried out in Biase, Cross River State, Nigeria from March to June, 2014. A total of 1296 mosquitoes made up of 795 (61.3%) Culex species, 342 (26.4%) Anopheles species, 102 (7.9%) Aedes species, and 57 (4.4%) of other Genera were caught using human bait and pyrethrum spray methods. Of the 1296 mosquitoes caught, 804 (62%) were caught in the rainy season while 492 (38%) were caught during dry season. The number of mosquitoes caught during dry and rainy seasons was statistically significant (X 2 = 0.62, P 0.05). There was a positive correlation between the infection rate among mosquitoes in the dry and rainy season (r = 0.85, P<0.05).The distribution of filarial larva (L1, L2 and L3) in the body of mosquitoes showed that Out of the 11Anopheles infected, 4 (1.2%) filarial worms were found in the head, 5 (1.4%) in the thorax and 2(0.5%) in the abdomen while out of the 13 culex mosquitoes infected, 6 (0.7%) filarial worm were found in the head, 3(0.4%) in the thorax and 4 (0.5%) in the abdomen. The highest number of filarial worms seen was L3 with 17 (70.8%), followed by L1 with 5 (20.8%) and lastly by L2 with 2 (8.3%). This study has shown that Anopheles species and the Culex species are the vectors of lymphatic filariasis in the study area.