Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

Target Pests

Practices

Mosquito abatement is one of the oldest contributors to Integrated Pest Management, with organized area-wide mosquito control being conducted for over 120 years in the United States. Mosquito-borne diseases that used to be major problems in the U.S. like yellow fever and malaria have been eliminated from the county through IPM (Patterson 2009). New challenges have appeared, and new pathogens have arrived in the country. For example, West Nile virus was introduced in 1999, and is presently the most common mosquito transmitted pathogen to people. Other diseases spread by mosquitoes that are new or were eliminated decades ago, have been recently brought into the U.S. including Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya.

IPM strategies for mosquitoes target different life stages of these insects, with many techniques focusing on eliminating juveniles. This effective strategy has been proven to reduce mosquitoes and diseases they carry, however, there are many instances where additional IPM methods are needed to control the adult mosquitoes. As flying insects, adult mosquitoes are harder to target than larval mosquitoes.

Adult mosquito suppression is a weak link in mosquito IPM due to limited pesticide application methods, few classes of active ingredients, rising insecticide resistance, cultural change, regulatory climate, and environmental barriers. Therefore, new methods are needed to help manage mosquitoes when existing methods are not practical (WHO 2017, Achee 2019). Attract and kill strategies have been widely successful in the IPM of insect pests including ants, cockroaches, beetles, and filth flies (Gregg 2018). We propose to adapt the attract and kill strategy by using persistent, stationary devices to lure in mosquitoes through attractants and then expose them to different classes of insecticides not currently compatible in existing adult mosquito management.

For use in the mosquito attract and kill device (MAKD) previous studies in our lab on 11 different potential active ingredients and found 3 excellent candidates. The top one will be used in trials with the MAKD this year. Evaluations will be conducted in two different Western States that have different situations where new mosquito control methods are needed. In UT, the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District (SLCMAD) must provide control for a newly opened State Correctional Facility, an otherwise isolated community of 2,500 residents and 500+ staff surrounded by wetlands that produce large numbers of mosquitoes, a Regional Athletic Complex (RAC) and many low-income residences that are in urban areas adjacent to mosquito producing habitats, and the Salt Lake City International Airport which also is surrounded by wetlands. The Teton County Weed and Pest District is in WY, an EPSCoR state and they face challenges of controlling mosquitoes along urban/rural interfaces while being unable to control mosquitoes located in nearby National Park and other protected lands. These are common problems to many Western States.

 Data from these attract and kill device trials will be shared with mosquito abatement at large, particularly those lacking manpower in their operations. We anticipate that our proposed mosquito attract and kill devices (MAKDs) will alleviate deficiencies that ULV methods have not overcome for decades.

1. Construct MAKD that is cost effective to operate in locations where adult mosquito control is needed more abundantly.
2. Improve insecticide resistance management by finding a safe way use insecticide classes that are not currently used by mosquito control and that local mosquito populations are sensitive to.
3. Evaluate MAKDs potential to prevent a host from being bitten by mosquitoes.
4. Determine if MAKDs kill mosquitoes in the field while having minimal impact on non-target insects, especially beneficial insects like pollinators.
5. Determine length of time pesticide treatment on MAKD will remain effective in field settings.