Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Community and Urban Pest Management: public health

• Human Health: workers, residents, applicators

Target Pests

• Target Pests: Asian tiger mosquito, other

Practices

• Pest Management: disease vectors, other

Mosquito-borne viruses pose a significant public health burden globally, and due to widespread lack of vaccines for use in humans, disease prevention and management is entirely contingent on understanding vector distributions and population dynamics. Effective mosquito surveillance often is severely constrained by competing issues of scale. Characterization of mosquito densities at the neighborhood level is highly desirable for endemic species, while efficient surveillance for invasive mosquitoes on the margins of their invasive ranges demands a sampling mechanism that can allow for massive, area-wide data collection. Traditional tools for monitoring mosquitoes (e.g., oviposition traps) often are impossible to implement at both these scales, due to their costliness to maintain and the labor and taxonomic expertise required to identify mosquito specimens to species. This proposal aims to develop environmental DNA (eDNA) technology for application in mosquito surveillance and control efforts, responding directly to calls for new technologies to enhance the efficiency of mosquito monitoring for vector control. eDNA is DNA naturally shed by organisms into their environment and, in turn, collected from environmental samples (like water) and analyzed. Because most DNA sequences are unique to particular taxa, and most organisms harbor and shed abundant amounts of DNA through sloughing or decay of tissues, eDNA technology is rapidly gaining momentum as an extremely sensitive monitoring tool, especially for “sight unseen” detection of rare or cryptic taxa. We propose that eDNA offers a promising tool to simultaneously identify local hotspots of endemic disease vectors and monitor area-wide for invasive species with low detection probabilities while mitigating the need for taxonomic expertise, offering the potential to improve the efficacy and reach of mosquito surveillance by teams of vector control professionals and community scientists. The proposed research establishes the critical foundation for widespread operationalization of eDNA use for mosquito detection and monitoring in public health contexts.

The proposed research encompasses three major objectives, which collectively establish the foundation that is critical for widespread operationalization of eDNA use for mosquito detection and monitoring in IPM and public health contexts.

1. Optimize inexpensive and replicable container habitats and sampling methods that can be widely deployed for surveillance of existing and future mosquito vectors. Anticipated outcome: Our team will develop robust and replicable field and laboratory protocols for confirming the presence of mosquito species using eDNA methods.
2. Quantify mosquito eDNA detection and enumeration power for our artificial container habitats via experimental and field data collection. Anticipated outcome: We will establish a quantitative definition of what constitutes mosquito “presence” (see Aim 1).
3. Develop optimal survey designs for the use of artificial container habitats in mosquito research and surveillance. Anticipated outcome: The major product of the proposed research will be a shareable, ground-truthed survey design for anyone wishing to undertake such methods that can be applied by IPM professionals and readily generalized to multiple vector mosquito species in the Northeast region and beyond.