The crested auklet (photo credit: Hector Douglas), a seabird located north in Alaska, may hold the key for repelling ticks and mosquitoes, as efficiently as current synthetic bug repellents. A researcher, Hector Douglas, a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, spent time studying the auklet’s years ago. He noticed that the birds smelled like a “citrus grove” when they passed him by.

Eventually, Mr. Douglas was led to do research on the birds, and the specific odor they produced. The scent of chemicals found in the crested auklet’s odor was composed of aldehydes. To reproduce this scent as a potential bug repellent, Douglas used a combination of synthetic chemicals. Two tests were conducted using lice and mosquitoes.

In the first test with lice, a can was stuck on a record player. The record player provided movement, and the can was heated to simulate the human body. When the can contained none of the synthetic bug deterrent, the lice would cover the can. When the repellent was added, the lice would stay away.

The second test was done with a very aggressive species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito. Douglas placed his hand in a cage full of female mosquitoes. He covered his hand with filter paper, and mosquitoes would swarm his hand. When the mosquito repellent was added, the similar scent of the crested auklet repelled mosquitoes up to a range of 99 percent effectiveness. These very impressive results are similar to the effects DEET has on mosquitoes. Results of these tests were published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. More tests and safety precautions must be taken before this repellent can be used commercially however.

It seems that while our purpose for the crested auklet’s scent is to find a better mosquito repellent, their’s is more primal. The bird uses this citrus smelling scent in courtship.

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How would you like to spend your summer trapping mosquitoes? That’s exactly the job that two county employees near Stroudsburg, PA get paid to do. If you can’t deter the mosquitoes, round ‘em up instead. The job has it’s downfalls though. They get eaten alive.

‘”You can walk in the woods and have 20 on you,” said Judy Cherepko. “We are probably the most chewed up people in the county.”‘

Judy Cherepko and Mike Pula spend most of their day setting traps for those annoying mosquitoes. Dry ice, fans, and battery-powered units suck in the pesky insects. One trap caught a many as 1300 mosquitoes this season.

Mosquitoes are sent to the state Department of Environmental Protection to detect if they carry the West Nile virus.

The fearless pair also spend their time spraying insects for periods as long as four to five hours. They’re not afraid to warn about the hazards mosquitoes can cause either, or good mosquito prevention techniques.

‘”If we see tires at somebody’s house we’ll stop and ask them to clean it up,” Cherepko said.’

Repellent Review gives a thumbs up to these two County workers. Without them and others who work on controlling our mosquito population, we’d be getting bit that much more.