Plant essential oils have been reported to elicit behavioral changes in larval mosquitoes and, in turn, might provide an environmentally safe approach to manage mosquito populations compared to synthetic insecticides. This study was conducted to examine the repellent activity of 30 plant-derived essential oils, in addition to DEET, to Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae. Here, we report 26 out of 31 essential oils to elicit significant repellent activity (i.e., 55-93% in illuminated side of the bioassay) mosquito larvae after 15 min using a horizontal spatial repellency bioassay. A vertical spatial repellency bioassay was used to examine the repellent activity of the plant-derived essential oils amyris, cajeput, sage, and tagetes after 15, 30, and 60 min, with ca. 90% of mosquito larvae responding to the oils and repelled from the water-air surface interface.
