A low-cost, battery-powered acoustic trap for surveilling male Aedes aegypti during rear-and-release operations

Johnson, Brian J., Rohde, Barukh B., Zeak, Nicholas, Staunton, Kyran, Prachar, Tim, and Ritchie, Scott (2018) A low-cost, battery-powered acoustic trap for surveilling male Aedes aegypti during rear-and-release operations. PLoS ONE, 13 (8).

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Abstract

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is a primary vector of several serious arboviruses throughout the world and is therefore of great concern to many public health organizations. With vector control methodology pivoting towards rearing and releasing large numbers of genetically modified, sterilized, or Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes to control vector populations, economical surveillance methods for release tracking becomes increasingly necessary. Previous work has identified that male Ae. aegypti are attracted to female wingbeat frequencies and can be captured through artificial playback of these frequencies, but the tested systems are cost-prohibitive for wide-scale monitoring. Thus, we have developed a simple, lowcost, battery-powered, microcontroller-based sound lure which mimics the wingbeat frequency of female Ae. aegypti, thereby attracting males. We then tested the efficacy of this lure in combination with a passive (non-powered) gravid Aedes trap (GAT) against the current gold-standard, the Biogents Sentinel (BGS) trap, which requires main power (household power) and costs several times what the GAT does. Capture rates of male Ae. aegypti in sound-baited GATs (Sound-GATs) in these field tests were comparable to that of the BGS with no inhibitory effects of sound playback on female capture. We conclude that theSound-GAT is an effective replacement of the costly BGS for surveillance of male Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, particularly in the developing countries where funding is limited, and has the potential to be adapted to target males of other medically important species.

Item ID: 54905
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1932-6203
Copyright Information: Copyright: © 2018 Johnson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funders: National Science Foundation (NSF), Verily Inc., Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Projects and Grants: NSF Grant DGE-1315138, NHMRC 1044698
Date Deposited: 10 Aug 2018 03:11
FoR Codes: 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420315 One health @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9204 Public Health (excl. Specific Population Health) > 920404 Disease Distribution and Transmission (incl. Surveillance and Response) @ 100%
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