Abstract
BackgroundThe yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, and the common house mosquito, Culex pipiens pallens, transmit dengue fever and West Nile virus diseases, respectively. This study was conducted to determine the toxicity of the three lignans (–)-asarinin, sesamin and (+)-xanthoxylol-γ,γ-dimethylallylether (XDA), and the alkaloid pellitorine from Zanthoxylum piperitum (Rutaceae) bark to third-instar larvae from insecticide-susceptible C. pipiens pallens and Ae. aegypti as well as wild C. pipiens pallens resistant to deltamethrin, cyfluthrin, fenthion, and temephos.MethodsThe toxicities of all isolates were compared with those of mosquito larvicide temephos. LC50 values for each species and their treatments were significantly different from one another when their 95% confidence intervals did not overlap.ResultsXDA was isolated from Z. piperitum as a new larvicidal principle. XDA (LC50, 0.27 and 0.24 mg/l) was 4, 53, and 144 times and 4, 100, and 117 times more toxic than pellitorine, sesamin, and asarinin toward larvae from susceptible C. pipiens pallens and Ae. aegypti, respectively. Overall, all the isolates were less toxic than temephos (LC50, 0.006 and 0.009 mg/l). These constituents did not differ in toxicity to larvae from the two Culex strains. The present finding indicates that the lignans and alkaloid and the insecticides do not share a common mode of larvicidal action or elicit cross-resistance.ConclusionNaturally occurring Z. piperitum bark-derived compounds, particularly XDA, merit further study as potential mosquito larval control agents or as lead compounds for the control of insecticide-resistant mosquito populations.
Highlights
The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, and the common house mosquito, Culex pipiens pallens, transmit dengue fever and West Nile virus diseases, respectively
Our aim was to assess whether the three lignans, asarinin, xanthoxylol-γ,γ-dimethylallylether (XDA) and sesamin, and the isobutylamide alkaloid pellitorine, extracted from the bark of Z. piperitum, had the toxicity to third-instar larvae from insecticide-susceptible C. pipiens pallens and Ae. aegypti, as well as wild colonies of C. pipiens pallens resistant to various insecticides [23]
Bioassay-guided fractionation and isolation The fractions obtained from the solvent partitioning of the methanol extract of the Z. piperitum bark were bioassayed toward third-instar larvae from insecticidesusceptible C. pipiens pallens (Table 1) and Ae. aegypti (Table 2)
Summary
The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, and the common house mosquito, Culex pipiens pallens, transmit dengue fever and West Nile virus diseases, respectively. Phytochemicals act at multiple, novel target sites [14, 16,17,18,19,20,21], thereby reducing the potential for resistance [17,18,19, 22, 23]. Based on these benefits of botanical insecticides, numerous papers are published annually [19, 24]. No previous studies have investigated the potential use of Japanese pepper, Zanthoxylum piperitum (L.) DC., for managing mosquitoes, insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, despite its repellency to Ae. aegypti [31] and the stable fly, Stomoxys calcitrans (Linnaeus, 1758) [32, 33]
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