Abstract
Objective. To monitor adult mosquito abundance in northern Belize before/after the first tropical storm of the wet season to estimate the time required for development/recovery of potential vector populations; determine which species predominate post-storm; and compare the effectiveness of two types of mosquito traps-octenol-baited Mosquito Magnets® and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) light traps (with/without octenol). Methods. Field experiments were conducted in Orange Walk Town, Belize, 21 May to 3 June 2008. Incidence rate ratios and exact binomial 95% confidence intervals were reported and trap-nights calculated to compare species abundance pre- and post-storm as well as trap- type effectiveness. Results. Twice as many species and three times more Anopheles spp. were trapped prestorm versus post-storm. However, greater numbers of Aedes taeniorhynchus and Culex (Culex) spp. were trapped post-storm. Mosquito Magnets® were consistently more effective than the CDC traps, obtaining twice as many Anopheles spp. and four times as many culicine species as the octenol-baited version (which collected 14 times more mosquitoes overall and 3.5 times more culicine species than the unbaited version). The unbaited CDC trap did not trap any Anopheles spp. during the study period.Conclusions. Results indicated octenol is an effective attractant for An. crucians in northern Belize; malaria risk in Belize declines immediately post-storm (i.e., mosquito abundance drops); and arboviral risk associated with the rapid increase in culicine mosquitoes post-storm may represent a greater public health threat than malaria (although further research and active disease surveillance is necessary to validate this hypothesis).
Department(s)
Public Health and Sports Medicine
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1590/S1020-49892010000700003
Rights Information
This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (BY-NC-ND) license.
Keywords
Belize, Insect vectors, Malaria, Mosquito control, Tropical storm, Vector control
Publication Date
1-1-2010
Recommended Citation
Morrow, Meredith G., Richard N. Johnson, Jorge Polanco, and David M. Claborn. "Mosquito vector abundance immediately before and after tropical storms Alma and Arthur, northern Belize, 2008." Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública 28 (2010): 19-24.
Journal Title
Pan American Journal of Public Health
Additional Information
Funding for this work was provided by Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland, under grant number GS87K3.