The Use of Automated Traps to Assess the Efficacy of Insecticide Barrier Treatments Against Abundant Mosquitoes in Remote Environments

Commercially available ‘smart’ trap technology has not yet been widely used to evaluate interventions against mosquitoes despite potential benefits. These benefits include the ability to capture data continuously at fine temporal scales without the human resources usually required for conventional t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of medical entomology 2022-01, Vol.59 (1), p.384-389
Main Authors: Johnson, Brian J, Manby, Russell, Devine, Gregor J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aedes - drug effects
Animals
Aquatic insects
Australia
barrier treatment
Coastal environments
Collections
Environment
Human resources
Humans
Information management
Insect control
Insecticides
Insecticides - administration & dosage
mosquito control
Mosquito Control - methods
Mosquitoes
nuisance
Permethrin
Population biology
Population Dynamics
Queensland
SHORT COMMUNICATION
smart trap
Traps
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Summary:Commercially available ‘smart’ trap technology has not yet been widely used to evaluate interventions against mosquitoes despite potential benefits. These benefits include the ability to capture data continuously at fine temporal scales without the human resources usually required for conventional trap deployment. Here, we used a commercially available smart trap (BG-Counter, Biogents) to assess the efficacy of an insecticide barrier treatment (BiFlex AquaMax) in reducing mosquito nuisance in a logistically challenging coastal environment in Queensland, Australia. Adoption of smart trap technology permitted us to conduct a uniquely detailed assessment of barrier treatments, ultimately allowing us to demonstrate significant reductions in mosquito collections from treated properties over all temporal scales. On average, daily mosquito collections from treated properties were reduced by 74.6% for the duration of the post-treatment period (56 d). This observation was supported by similar reductions (73.3%) in mosquito collections across all hours of the day. It was further found that underlying mosquito population dynamics were comparable across all study sites as evidenced by the high congruence in daily collection patterns among traps (Pearson r = 0.64). Despite limitations related to trap costs and replication, the results demonstrate that smart traps offer new precision tools for the assessment of barrier treatments and other mosquito control interventions.
ISSN:0022-2585
1938-2928
DOI:10.1093/jme/tjab178