284 

 the 46 compounds are lactic acid, unsaturated alcohols, and tertiary amines. Lactic 

 acid is a known attractant, and was observed present in greater abundance (in most 

 cases) for the more attractive host. This may partially explain the attraction oiAedes 

 aegypti to this host as well as fluctuations in mosquito attraction. The unsaturated 

 alcohols are of interest due to the similarity in structure to l-octen-3-ol, a compound 

 which has been found to attract various species of mosquitoes. The tertiary amines 

 were not only found in increased abundance on the more attractive host; they also 

 decreased significantly in abundance when analyzed for 8 hours later. This profile 

 is similar to observations concerning attraction to handled glass in an olfactometer. 



Bio-assay versus GC/MS Assay 



The most difficult and potentially most informative study involved comparison 

 of the same subject on consecutive days. TTie reason for this difficulty stems from 

 the similarity of the skin matrix for the same host, only minor variations in relative 

 abundances of most components were observed. Thirteen compounds, including the 

 unsaturated alcohols mentioned above, were found to increase on the more attractive 

 day; seventeen were found to decrease. This discrepancy may simply be due to 

 normal variations in abundances from day to day, as was seen throughout many of 

 the analyses conducted for the previous case study. Additionally, imprecision exists 

 in bio-assays such that the attraction percentage may not exactly reflect differences 

 between days reported in this study. 



