Some aspects of changing behaviour of malaria vectors in tribal areas of India.

ABSTRACT

The field entomological studies and surveys carried out in 72 tribal districts out of 100 in seven penninsular States namely, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Rajasthan indicated that in most of the areas the vector mosquitoes encountered during the present study were almost the same as recorded by the earlier workers except that Anopheles fluviatilis James, 1902 was recorded in the areas of district Raipur, Durg, Bilaspur, Raigarh, Shahdol, Rajnandgaon, Barwani and Janjgir of Madhya Pradesh, and Sundergarh of Orissa during the present survey. This vector was not recorded in earlier studies by other workers. An. culicifacies Giles, 1901 was not found in present survey in East Godavari and Vishakhapatnam of Andhra Pradesh and Ganjam and Koraput of Orissa where this mosquito was found in collections earlier. Similarly, An. fluviatilis was not encountered during the present field study in Bhilwara of Rajasthan, Phulbani and Kalahandi of Orissa, Thane, Nanded and Nasik of Maharashtra and Bharuch of Gujarat state. During this study An. fluviatilis was noted to be mostly endophilic whereas earlier workers noted this mosquito to be exophilic in a large number of districts. The majority of the tribal districts seem to be under the influence of two malaria vectors, An. culicifacies and An. fluviatilis and these tribal districts are maintaining a high malaria endemicity with predominance of Plasmodium falciparum infection. In the present study, the transmission seasons were noted to be longer than recorded earlier in the districts of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Orissa. In the remaining states it is almost similar as recorded earlier.