Gama, Renata AntonaciBrambilla, Paula Blandy Tissot2020-09-102020-09-102016-02-05BRAMBILLA, Paula Blandy Tissot. Aperfeiçoamento do olfatômetro vertical: uma ferramenta para estudos comportamentais de insetos anemotáxicos hematófagos utilizando como modelo experimental Anopheles aquasalis (Diptera: Culicidae). 2016. 64f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Biologia Parasitária) - Centro de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2016.https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/30029The Anopheles genus mosquitoes are vectors of the Plasmodium that cause human malaria, the development of new tools, methods and techniques to fight malaria transmission are high priority. In order to develop new ways to fight the mosquito, we have to understand its behavior when searching for the host, which is the main link in the transmission of the disease. The olfactometers are a simple and reliable way to obtain behavioral responses of insects, when used in a specific way for the tested insect. Although widely employed in the study of agricultural entomology for pest control, the use of olfactometry for the study of vector insects in Brazil is scarce. Due to the eminent importance of developing new ways to block the link of pathogens transmission from mosquitoes to humans, it is essential to optimize tools that help us to understand the vector behavior. Considering that, the study aimed at developing a vertical olfactometer with air flow for the haematophagous insects,using Anopheles aquasalis as experimental model. The existence of such tool was verified in worldwide public patent databases, afterwards the olfactometer was built based on existing models, with the implementation of the air flow and video system, in order to become suitable to anemotaxis insects as described in the literature. Tests were performed with three different cameras, absence and presence of airflow, smoke tests and indiscriminate bioassays with kairomone octenol and animals in order to assess the functioning of the olfactometer and its implementations. As results, we can assert that there are no specific olfactometers for the Anopheles aquasalis nor to the Anopheles genus, and there is no vertical olfactometer with air flow to evaluate the smell response in anemotaxis insects. We observed that odor plumes generated in the smoke test from water vapor are much denser, being more suited to the evaluation of its structure than those generated by acetic acid and ammonium hydroxide, in addition to being non-toxic and low-cost. About the implementations, we noted that the GoPro Hero 3+ camera demonstrated superior performance to the other tested, capturing clearly attraction and activation movements of the mosquitoes; the air flow generated turbulence in the odor plume tests, making the diffusion active instead of passive. In the indiscriminate bioassays with octenol we observed that rates of 15mg/h have the highest average of attractiveness (66.66%) compared to 14 mg/h (33.33%) and 18mg/h (0%), demonstrating that there is a relation between volatilization rate and the number of insects attracted (p<0.05); with different hosts we observed no relation (p=1:00) among different species and attractiveness rate of Anopheles aquasalis. We conclude that the development of a specific tool to assess the haematofagous anemotaxis insects behavior makes the obtained results more reliable, due to the device being specific to the insect, allowing the realization of simpler and more accurate behavioral studies.Acesso AbertoMaláriaVetoresEcologia químicaOlfatometriamasterThesis