The General Idea behind
the Great Labor Day Mosquito Count
Photos courtesy of
U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
Our goal is to develop
a standard method of sampling mosquitoes that breed in
containers. These include mosquitoes that have caused
lots of trouble for people for many thousands of years.
In addition to being pests, these insects can also
carry serious diseases. Container-breeding mosquitoes
lay their eggs in small bodies of water, including water
that gathers in trees and some smaller plants. Some
mosquitoes also breed in other water-holding containers
that we leave around, and this includes many possible
places, such as tires, buckets, drain pipes, and flower
pots. Just about any small body of water that stays
around for over a week during the summer is a possible
place for some mosquito to lay its eggs. If the water
remains for long enough, the eggs can hatch and the
immature stages (larvae) can develop. One convenient
way of estimating how many mosquitoes are in an area is to
place traps where mosquitoes will lay eggs, and to count
the eggs laid in those traps.
North America has
recently been invaded by a mosquito from Asia, which
arrived here when many used tires were imported for
recycling. This Asian Tiger Mosquito has been successful,
beginning in the Gulf coast region, spreading throughout
the Southeast, and has become the most common
container
breeder in places that
were once dominated by a species introduced from Africa
during the slave trade, the Yellow Fever mosquito. One
of our goals is to estimate the northern limits of the
range of this species.
We are also interested
in the effect of this introduced mosquito on a native
species, the Eastern Treehole Mosquito. This species
occupies treeholes and other containers in shady places
throughout the eastern US. The invasion provides the
opportunity to determine how strongly these two species
affect each other's success, to make predictions about the
long-term outcome of the invasion, and to test those
predictions.
To do this, we need to sample many different locations,
estimate the abundance of the different species in each
area, and track their abundance through time. We have
enlisted over 40 teachers and group leaders to help us with
this task, and they will in turn be helped by over 1000
students. We do not know of any study that has followed
this many populations simultaneously for any organism, and
we hope this effort can be extended for at least several
years. If we can, this will become a study of
populations at a uniquely large scale.
Along the way, we also hope to help teachers engage
students in the process of science, which can be done
anywhere using ordinary household objects and simple
equipment.
