Aecles luteocephalus, an important vector of arbovirases, was strtdied for three years in three diferent biotopes of Sudanese Savannah in Western Sertegal : a dry forest of acacias, a mangrove gallery and a clear foresf close to this gallery. This mosquito is not $ery abundant in the dry forest where the amount of daily bt’tes is ovei ten during only fhree monfhs. In the mangrove gallery it is found in M. CORNET et R. CHATEAU Laboratoire d’Entomologie Médicale, Centre 0. R.S. T.O.M. de Dakas-Hann, B.P. 1386, Dakar, Slnégai. profl(sion and fhis amount gets over fhree hundred during at Ieast four months in the year. Its behaviour is also different: in the dry forest its biting cycle shows a short peak immediafely affer dusk, wJrereas in fhe mangrove this peak is wides, during the firsf half of the night. These diflerences in its behaviour and its seasonal distribution allow fo explain some pecularities in the cycle of some arboviruses, specially of chikunganya virus which was the cause of a big epidemozootic in Western Senegal in 1966. The mangrove was certainly a place wllere the circulation of the virus was magnijîed between Aedes luteocephalus and tJle monkeys and where these animais carried out the virus iiear the village frorn.
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