Floral/fruity scents have long been characterized as attractive to mosquitoes, so it's natural that New Mexico State's Molecular Vector Physiology Lab researcher Stacy Rodriguez tested a floral/fruity perfume against DEET in a lab trial.
But Rodriguez was surprised to discover that mosquitoes were almost as repelled by a Victoria's Secret perfume called "Bombshell" as they were by DEET. By contrast, mosquitoes were actually attracted by vitamin-D-based "mosquito patches," preferring to drink from subjects wearing them to subjects wearing no repellent at all.
Rodriguez published her results in Oxford University Press's Journal of Insect Science.
To test the repellents, they put two different species of mosquitoes in a holding chamber at the bottom of a Y-shaped tube (see below). One prong of the Y led to a researcher's untreated hand. The other prong led to a hand that had been coated with one of the repellents. When the mosquitoes were unleashed from their cage, they could choose to fly toward the treated or untreated hands.
Obviously, if a lot of mosquitoes flew toward the treated hand, the repellent wasn't actually repelling anything. So the researchers counted how many mosquitoes picked the hands with treatments on them, and measured this "attraction" accordingly. They also took measurements over time, to see which repellent was still working after several hours.
Scientific Study: Victoria's Secret Perfume Is Actually Mosquito Repellent
[Annalee Newitz/Gizmodo]
The Efficacy of Some Commercially Available Insect Repellents for Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) and Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae) [Stacy D. Rodriguez, Lisa L. Drake, David P. Price, John I. Hammond, Immo A. Hansen/Journal of Insect Science]
