Beyond mosquitoes—Essential oil toxicity and repellency against bloodsucking insects

The control of insect pests and vectors is a timely challenge for public health. The prevention of bites from bloodsucking insect species is based to a large extent on the use of chemical repellents and pesticides. However, their effectiveness is currently endangered, due to the fast-growing resistance levels in the targeted vectors, besides their negative impact on human health and the environment. Therefore, natural product research has been claimed as a helpful tool to develop effective green pesticides and repellents. Among them, essential oils (EOs) extracted from plants received peculiar attention for applications in “the real world”, since they showed high efficacy, multiple mechanisms of action and low toxicity on non-target vertebrates. However, the large majority of research items published on the topic studied the potential of EOs in the fight against mosquitoes (668 research items) and ticks (155), while only a relatively limited amount (