RESUMO
Honeybees are critically important for the environment and to the economy. However, there are in substantial decline worldwide, leading to serious threat to the stability and yield of food crops. Beekeeping is of pivotal importance, combining the wide economical aspect of honey production and the important ecological services provided by honeybees. In this scenario, the prompt identification of beekeeping areas is strategic, since it maximised productivity and lowered the risks of colony losses. Fuzzy logic is an ideal approach for problem-solving tasks, as it is specifically designed to manage problems with a high degree of uncertainty. This research tested a novel GIS-based approach to assess beekeeping suitability of lands located in Calabria (Southern Italy), without relying to Analytic Hierarchy Process - Multiple Criteria Decision Making (AHP-MCDM), thus avoiding the constraints due to the technique and decision makers' influences. Furthermore, the data used here were completely retrieved from open access sources, highlighting that our approach is characterized by low costs and can be easily reproduced for a wide arrays of geographical contexts. Notably, the results obtained by our experiments were validated by the actual beekeeping reality. Besides beekeeping, the use of this system could not only be applied in beekeeping land suitability evaluations, but may be successfully extended to other types of land suitability evaluations.
RESUMO
In this study, we evaluated the larvicidal activity of four citrus essential oils (EOs; sweet orange, mandarin, bergamot, and lemon) against the arbovirus vector Aedes albopictus (Skuse) (Diptera: Culicidae) under laboratory conditions. Through gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analyses, we found that in sweet orange, mandarin, and lemon EOs, limonene was the most abundant compound, whereas linalyl acetate was the most abundant in the bergamot EO. All tested EOs showed a marked larvicidal activity, in particular sweet orange, lemon, and bergamot that killed all treated larvae. After 24 h of exposure, the LC50 values of the tested citrus EOs ranged from 145.27 (lemon EO) to 318.07 mg liter(-1) (mandarin EO), while LC(95) ranged from 295.13 to 832.44 mg liter(-1). After 48 h of exposure, the estimated LC(50) values decreased to values ranging from 117.29 to 209.38 mg liter(-1), while LC(95) ranged from 231.85 to 537.36 mg liter(-1). The results obtained from these evaluations, together with the large availability at reasonable costs of citrus EOs, are promising for the potential development of a new botanical mosquitocide.
