Forest malaria in Bangladesh. II. Transmission by Anopheles dirus.

Abstract

Seasonal, holoendemic malaria transmission in a small, isolated forest community was studied by doing outdoor and indoor all-night man-biting catches over 21 consecutive months. More than 3.8% of Anopheles dirus (=An. balabacensis s.l.), the most frequently caught anopheline, were infective. One An. annularis was also infective. Transmission occurred only during the 7-month monsoon. In the absence of DDT, An. dirus bit with equal frequency indoors and outdoors. When DDT was present in dwellings, fewer females fed indoors and they fed earlier. Feeding pattern was influenced by the phase of the moon: peak outdoors feeding was sharpest and earliest at first quarter and came later as the moon rose later. An average 31% of biting An. dirus lived long enough to reach infectivity of P. falciparum. Although fewer than 10 females fed per man per night, a resident could have received more than 100 infective bites in 2 years. Correlation between actual and calculated rates of gametocytemia were poorest in months when calculated survival rates of mosquitoes were most suspect.