Well-organized human bait catches remain the single most important means of assessing Anopheles populations. An indoor environment will affect the host-stream in several ways that might be expected to increase the range of attraction for a particular host. In view of the practical importance of indoor vs. outdoor feeding, research into this little-understood subject should be undertaken. A pre-attack resting phase in the vicinity of the host is known to occur in certain Anopheles. Experiments on the West African species A. melas (Theobald) provided evidence for no more than a short delay near the host before the insect fed.

Assessment of outdoor resting of Anopheles is facilitated by use of standardized artificial shelters. Their use is largely limited to vectors that rest in heavily shaded natural shelters. Quantitative catches of those that rest in vegetation are difficult to achieve.

Mark-recapture techniques can be used for studies on dispersion, longevity, and measurement of populations. The last-mentioned subject has been much neglected in Anopheles, and its adoption in studies of vectors is urged.

It is suggested that the value of age-grading methods for assessment of the mortality inflicted by house spraying is less than is often thought. The reasons lie in the unreliability of the parous rate for estimating mortalities, the need to average results of dissections over relatively long periods, and the fact that the high survival rate associated with outdoor feeding on animals, where this occurs, obscures the mortality inflicted on man-biting individuals indoors.

The recent use of light traps in houses for sampling malaria vectors seems to be a method of considerable promise. Its success relies on combining the trapping mechanism of the light trap with the attractant effect of human or animal hosts.