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Abstract
The aim of this work was to study the pre-ovipostion and oviposition behaviour of gravid Culex quinquefasciatus females, under laboratory conditions. Preliminary tests showed that oviposition is initiated from the third day after bloodfeeding and occurs in the first two hours and the eighth to the tenth hour of scotophase. Image analysis showed that females presented different types of exploratory flights, and that the most common was touching the hay infusion with their hind legs, while flying. The two main oviposition behaviours observed were: (1) females that land at the container's inner wall, rub one leg against the other and walk towards the interface between the wall and hay infusion surface to lay the egg raft; (2) females that land on the hay infusion surface, keep four or six legs on the surface, and lay the egg raft. Interestingly, females that touched the hay infusion with their proboscis rejected it as an oviposition substrate.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank MSc Adriana Gomes for assistance with VCR recordings for fruitful conversations and suggestions; to MSc Célia de Sá Sciavicco for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG), Brazil. We wish to thank anonymous referee for suggestion and grammatical revision.