TOXIC EFFECT OF PYRETHROIDS ON THE TAIGA TICK IXODES PERSULCATUS SCHULZE: RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DOSE AND KNOCKDOWN TIME

About authors:

А.К. Dobrotvorsky, Institute for Systematics and Ecology of Animals, Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 11 Frunze Str., Novosibirsk, 630091  Russia

A. N. Alekseev, Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya emb., 1, 199034 St. Petersburg,
RUSSIA
A.V. Tkachev, Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry, Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, 630090 Russia

Acknowledgments:

The research described in this publication was supported in part by grants from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Award №98-04-49638) and the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the Independent States of the FSU (Award № RNl-427).

We thank Dr. Olga V. Chankina (Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion, Siberian Divi-sion of the Russian Academy of Sciences) for the assistance in the experiments.
 

Annotation:

The use of pyrethroids for personal protection against ticks is based on the knockdown effect, e.g. locomotor activity disorders and paralysis develop-ing in a short period of time after contact with the toxicant. So the knockdown time (KT) is one of the critical characteristics of reliability of a pyrethroid as anti-tick clothing treatment agent. The present study is aimed to establish relationships between a dose and the KT for certain marketable pyrethroids (permethrin, cxcypermethrin, and flumethrin) which are used (or could be used) for protection against taiga ticks Ixodes persulcatus Schulze.

For all these pyrethroids the KT varied within a wide range at every dose used. We observed similar unimodal distributions of the KT in all experiments. The KT reduced with the increase of the dose, and this relationship was non-linear for all the com-pounds tested. Flumethrin at high doses caused knockdown developing in the shortest time, although its KT was longest at lower doses. In contrast, KT of permethrin and a-cypermethrin were less dependent to dosage.

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