Assistant Professor University of Florida Gainesville, Florida
The emergence and re-emergence of mosquito-borne diseases such as zika, chikungunya and dengue fever remains a global public health challenge that threatens many communities in the continental United States. As of today, there are no effective vaccines or therapeutic drugs available for the control of most arboviral diseases, and the prevention and reduction of cases relies mainly on vector control measures. New and affordable tools to control mosquitoes have been developed in the past decade. Yet, for many of these, their efficiency in the field has not been well characterized. In this proposal, we propose to evaluate the efficacy of the In2Care® mosquito trap in reducing the Aedes aegypti population in a Gainesville community where it has re-emerged after 26 years of absence. Our goal is to use the In2Care® mosquito trap in conjunction with routine larviciding interventions to reduce and limit the spread of Aedes aegypti populations in the Gainesville area as well as determining the lowest trap density at which the In2Care® mosquito trap is efficient in order to reduce the cost of intervention by mosquito control districts.
