Abstract
The Biogents® Sentinel (BGS) trap is the standard tool to monitor adult Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus (Skuse) (Diptera: Culicidae), the Asian tiger mosquito. BGS traps are commonly placed in residential properties during surveillance operations, but locations within properties may have significant differences in ambient light, temperature, and humidity (e.g. between a sunlit lawn and shady underbrush). We examined the effect of BGS trap placement on Ae. albopictus capture rates in three residential properties in Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA. In each property we visually selected locations as shade, partial shade, and sun. Traps in “partial shade” locations were under vegetation and were exposed to filtered sunlight during some parts of the day while “shaded” locations were never exposed to direct sunlight. Locations defined as “sun” were exposed to direct sunlight for large parts of the day. We placed a BGS trap in each of the three location types and used small data loggers to measure temperature, relative humidity, and light exposure at each trap during a 24-hour deployment. To address temporal variability, we made seven separate measurements from 31 August to 22 September 2010. We found that “partial shade” and “full shade” locations did not differ but that “full sun” locations had significantly higher light exposure, higher temperature, and lower humidity. Importantly, Ae. albopictus catches (males, females, or both) were consistently and significantly over 3 times higher in traps located in shaded locations. To further investigate the effects of local temperature and humidity on surveillance we examined Ae. albopictus collections from 37 BGS traps fitted with data loggers and deployed weekly from August through mid October, during the 2009 season, in three urban sites in Mercer County, NJ. We confirmed that local climate influences capture rates and that Ae. albopictus surveillance projects need to monitor trap placement carefully for maximum efficiency.
Highlights
Good surveillance is the foundation of informative field epidemiology and effective vector or nuisance mosquito control programs
Hygrochrons placed in different locations in and on the three experimental BiogentsH Sentinel (BGS) traps registered significantly different values of temperature (F16,33 ratio = 66.0, P,0.0001) and relative humidity (RH, F16,33 ratio = 27.81, P,0.0001), but repeated measures comparisons among the three replicates did not reveal differences (F2,47 = 0.05, P = 0.95; F2,47 = 0.63, P = 0.54, for temperature and RH, respectively)
Our results indicate that BGS trap placement significantly affects the number of Ae. albopictus captured
Summary
Good surveillance is the foundation of informative field epidemiology and effective vector or nuisance mosquito control programs. The BG SentinelTM trap (BGS trap, Biogents AG, Regensburg, Germany) has become the established tool to survey Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus (Skuse 1895), the Asian tiger mosquito (ATM), a daytime biting species. The effectiveness of this trap has been demonstrated for temperate populations of Ae. albopictus [1,2] but the effect of specific environmental characteristics in the location of the traps has not been evaluated. Adult mosquito surveillance has historically focused on night and crepuscular biting mosquitoes [3] While at those times temperature and humidity are relatively evenly distributed across the sites being surveyed, direct sunlight during the day creates a patchwork of temperatures and humidity. Adult Ae. albopictus in general are thought to be highly sensitive to low humidity conditions [4,5] and the interplay between ambient light, temperature, and humidity are of notable importance
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