We use a variety of traps to catch mosquitoes. These include surveillance and control traps.
Surveillance traps:
Surveillance traps are used by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Local Health Departments (LHD) to monitor mosquito abundance in areas. Different traps are used to attract different species of mosquitoes.
Surveillance traps will be placed at the center house of each treatment every one to two weeks to monitor mosquito abundance. Traps are placed and removed after 24 hours.
Ovitrap
These are black buckets that allow us to measure how many pregnant, adult female mosquitoes are in an area. Female mosquitoes will lay their eggs in the trap. We will count and identify mosquito larvae.
Biogent Sentinel Trap (BG Trap)
These traps primarily collect adult Aedes mosquitoes that are invasive and are aggressive, day-active biters. Inside the trap pictured here, a canister of dry ice produces carbon dioxide, the same gas that we exhale. This and a human pheromone lure attract female mosquitoes that are looking for an animal to bite. When female mosquitoes fly into the trap, they are captured in a mesh bag and cannot escape because a battery operated fan keeps them in place
CDC Gravid Water Trap (Gravid Trap)
These traps collect Culex mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus. The trap consists of a bucket of stinky water, made from grass clippings that have fermented for a week or so, a fan and a net. When female Culex mosquitoes try to lay their eggs on the surface of the stinky water, the battery-operated fan sucks them up into the net where they are trapped.
Control Traps:
Control traps differ from surveillance traps in the sense that they are meant to attract, target, and kill mosquitoes. The goal of the control traps is to reduce mosquito populations, which is why they will be constantly running for the experiment. This is different from the surveillance traps that we are using to determine what types and how many mosquitoes are present in the center household in each of our mosquito treatments (SRAY and NO SPRAY).
These traps will be placed in the yards of all residents who are assigned to the No Spray + Traps treatment. They will remain in yards all summer from June – September.
In2Care
Adult female mosquitoes fly into the station to lay their eggs. When they do this, they pick up a larvicide which kills mosquito larvae. When the female mosquito flies to another site and lays her eggs there, she transfers the larvicide to the new breeding source so that any larvae in that source will also die. A few days later, the female mosquito dies from a fungal pesticide that she also picked up from the trap.
CDC Gravid Water Trap (Gravid Trap)
So nice we use it twice! The Gravid trap is the best at catching Culex mosquitoes. We can collect hundreds of mosquitoes within a 24 hour period. Therefore, we will be using this for both surveillance and control testing since West Nile virus is a concern for the Columbus area.
These traps collect Culex mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus. The trap consists of a bucket of stinky water, made from grass clippings that have fermented for a week or so, a fan and a net. When female Culex mosquitoes try to lay their eggs on the surface of the stinky water, the battery-operated fan sucks them up into the net where they are trapped.
When the CDC Gravid Trap is used as a control trap, it will be connected to a solar-powered battery to let it run the whole summer. We will also place a bacterially-derived pesticide in the bucket to kill mosquito larvae that may develop.