WingBank: A Wing Image Database of Mosquitoes

Flávia Virginio,Lincoln Suesdek,Lucas Andrade,Letícia Cecília Gomes Da Silva,Kelly Rosa Braghetto,Victor Domingues

doi:10.3389/fevo.2021.660941

Abstract

Mosquito-borne diseases affect millions of people and cause thousands of deaths yearly. Vaccines have been hitherto insufficient to mitigate them, which makes mosquito control the most viable approach. But vector control depends on correct species identification and geographical assignment, and the taxonomic characters of mosquitoes are often inconspicuous to non-taxonomists, which are restricted to a life stage and/or even damaged. Thus, geometric morphometry, a low cost and precise technique that has proven to be efficient for identifying subtle morphological dissimilarities, may contribute to the resolution of these types of problems. We have been applying this technique for more than 10 years and have accumulated thousands of wing images with their metadata. Therefore, the aims of this work were to develop a prototype of a platform for the storage of biological data related to wing morphometry, by means of a relational database and a web system named “WingBank.” In order to build the WingBank prototype, a multidisciplinary team performed a gathering of requirements, modeled and designed the relational database, and implemented a web platform. WingBank was designed to enforce data completeness, to ease data query, to leverage meta-studies, and to support applications of automatic identification of mosquitoes. Currently, the database of the WingBank contains data referring to 77 species belonging to 15 genera of Culicidae. From the 13,287 wing records currently cataloged in the database, 2,138 were already made available for use by third parties. As far as we know, this is the largest database of Culicidae wings of the world.

Highlights

Diseases whose etiological agents are dispersed by vectors, such as mosquitoes, have been a major public health problem worldwide for years
In recent publications referring to biological databases, Dujardin et al (2010); Garros and Dujardin (2013) report on the importance of creating DBs related to the use of the mosquito wing geometric morphometry (WGM) technique
The WingBank can enable studies of reanalysis and meta-analysis, micro and macroevolutionary and that can contribute to integrative taxonomy, a multidisciplinary approach defended by several authors as the best approach for the diagnosis of species (Schlick-Steiner et al, 2010; Garros and Dujardin, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Diseases whose etiological agents are dispersed by vectors, such as mosquitoes, have been a major public health problem worldwide for years These diseases, between the 17th and 20th centuries, caused the death of more people than all other causes combined (Gubler, 1991) and interfered with the economic development of large areas around the world (Philip and Rozenboom, 1973; Calmon, 1975; Gubler, 1991). Amongst insect Families popularly known as mosquitoes, the Culicidae family represents an important group composed of several vector species of disease-causing pathogens, including viruses, worms and protozoans. All these pathogens cause important but neglected. In 2019, it led more than 400,000 people to death, 67% of them children (World Health Organization, 2020b)

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