Characterizing larval breeding sites: chemical volatiles in Rabai, Kenya
Chemical volatiles released from a larval breeding site could act as olfactory cues for mosquitoes during oviposition (Afify & Galizia, 2015), yet the volatile profiles of wild larval breeding sites have rarely been examined. We attempted to describe the volatile profile in larval breeding sites in Rabai, Kenya. In brief, we collected water samples from a subset of larval breeding sites (Table 1) and extracted the volatiles into an absorbent with a steady airflow. The captured volatiles were examined by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) at Yale West Campus Analytical Core. We then identified and quantified each compound by mapping the GC-MS peaks to a reference library. The technical details were described in the Appendix. Due to the sparsity of compounds in the final dataset, we did not perform statistical analysis but instead summarized the compound concentrations using a heatmap.