PLANT-BORNE COMPOUNDS AND NANOPARTICLES: CHALLENGES FOR MEDICINE, PARASITOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY Boswellia ovalifoliolata (Burseraceae) essential oil as an eco-friendly larvicide? Toxicity against six mosquito vectors of public health importance, non-target mosquito fishes, backswimmers, and water bugs Giovanni Benelli 1 & Mohan Rajeswary 2 & Periasamy Vijayan 2 & Sengamalai Senthilmurugan 2 & Naiyf S. Alharbi 3 & Shine Kadaikunnan 3 & Jamal M. Khaled 3 & Marimuthu Govindarajan 2 Received: 25 December 2016 /Accepted: 13 March 2017 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017 Abstract The use of synthetic pesticides to control vector pop- ulations is detrimental to human health and the environment and may lead to the development of resistant strains. Plants can be alternative sources of safer compounds effective on mosquito vectors. In this study, the mosquito larvicidal activity of Boswellia ovalifoliolata leaf essential oil (EO) was evaluated against Anopheles stephensi, Anopheles subpictus, Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus, Culex quinquefasciatus, and Culex tritaeniorhynchus. GC-MS revealed that the B. ovalifoliolata EO contained at least 20 compounds. The main constituents were β-pinene, α-terpineol, and caryophyllene. In acute toxicity assays, the EO was toxic to larvae of An. stephensi, Ae. aegypti, Cx. quinquefasciatus, An. subpictus, Ae. albopictus, and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus with LC 50 values of 61.84, 66.24, 72.47, 82.26, 89.80, and 97.95 μg/ml, respectively. B. ovalifoliolata EO was scarcely toxic to mosquito fishes, backswimmers, and water bugs predating mosquito larvae with LC 50 from 4186 to 14,783 μg/ml. Overall, these results contribute to develop effective and affordable instruments to magnify the reliability of Culicidae control programs. Keywords Dengue fever . Filariasis . Malaria . Japanese encephalitis . Yellow fever . Zika virus Introduction The control of arthropod vectors is a key and timely challenge in current parasitology (Benelli et al. 2016a, b; Ward and Benelli 2017). In particular, mosquito-borne diseases represent major public health problems in many countries worldwide, since they act as vectors for an extremely high number of parasites and pathogens, with special reference to malaria, yellow fever, den- gue, Japanese encephalitis, lymphatic filariasis, and even Zika virus, as recently highlighted by the outbreaks occurring in the Americas (Benelli 2015a; Benelli and Mehlhorn 2016). Current mosquito control programs mainly rely to contin- ued applications of chemical pesticides, including organo- phosphates, pyrethroids, and insect growth regulators (Benelli 2015a; Naqqash et al. 2016). The use of synthetic pesticides to control vector populations is detrimental to hu- man health and the environment and lead to the development of resistant strains (Naqqash et al. 2016). Recent studies are revitalizing the research interest on herbal products that may be used as ovicides, larvicides, adulticides, and adult repel- lents or oviposition deterrents against Culicidae of public health importance (e.g., Prajapati et al. 2005; Autran et al. 2009; Cheng et al. 2009a, b; Conti et al. 2014; Govindarajan 2011; Khandagle et al. 2011; Benelli et al. 2015, 2017a, b; Campolo et al. 2016; Da Silva et al. 2015; Govindarajan et al. 2016a, b; Pavela and Benelli 2016a; Silva et al. 2016). Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues * Giovanni Benelli benelli.giovanni@gmail.com * Marimuthu Govindarajan drgovind1979@gmail.com 1 Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Pisa, via del Borghetto 80, 56124 Pisa, Italy 2 Unit of Vector Control, Phytochemistry and Nanotechnology, Department of Zoology, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, Tamil Nadu 608 002, India 3 Department of Botany and Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia Environ Sci Pollut Res DOI 10.1007/s11356-017-8820-0