First studies showing high temephos resistance in (: from Tunisia.

BACKGROUND

Despite the public health importance of , their resistance status to temephos insecticide has not, to our knowledge, been explored.

OBJECTIVES

The present study was carried out to determine the temephos resistance status of field populations of from Tunisia.

METHODS

Six field populations of were collected as larvae from breeding sites of Northern and Central Tunisia. All the tests were carried out according to the WHO method.

RESULTS

Results reported that the majority of field populations showed low and medium resistance ratios (6.2<RR50< 29.8) to temephos insecticide tested except for the strain # 1 which had interestingly a very high resistance with RR50 of 624 never detected in Tunisia and North Africa even on other species of mosquitoes.

CONCLUSION

The resistance ratios of this species were higher than recorded in other countries. Biochemical and molecular studies would be of great importance to identify the mechanisms involved in the recorded resistance to temephos.