Caribbean is next in line for trial of new mosquito trap

Not too long from now, a new type of mosquito trap may be coming to a Caribbean island near you. Researchers from New Orleans’ Tulane University, working off a US$4.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has partnered with North Carolina State University, the University of California, Davis and the United States Army to perfect a potentially low-cost invention that targets female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which have already fed on human blood. Most devices currently in use and under development more broadly attract females seeking their first blood meals.

Tulane’s trap is a black, one-foot high trash-can looking contraption with a bright red cover filled with an infusion of water laced with special attractants that the mosquitoes like and a pesticide to kill the eggs.  The container is lined with a fabric impregnated with an insecticide to kill the adults when they land to oviposit their eggs.

“If we can lure that mosquito in and kill her before she has that next blood meal, then we can stop…transmission,” explains Dawn Wesson, Associate Professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in a Tulane article entitled “Trap Tricks Pregnant Mosquitoes With Enticingly Lethal Maternity Ward” published in newswise.com. “It’s a novel approach to not only mosquito control, but disease control.”

One can well imagine that if the trap works – and there is no reason why it shouldn’t – adult female mosquitoes will have no way of getting out of it alive; nor will their progeny make it past the egg stage.  Thus, mosquito density will be reduced (there will be fewer Dengue infected, blood-seeking Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to go around) while these disease-carrying insects will be prevented from repeatedly spreading the Dengue virus.

Dawn Wesson: “After malaria, dengue is the most important mosquito transmitted disease in the world and is a major cause of disease and death in the tropics.  Right now there has really been nothing that can be safely used on a wide, multinational scale to reduce dengue transmission.  If this trap works, we think it can change a lot of people’s lives.” (Source: newswise)

Iquitos, Peru is the first site where the researchers will test their trap.  It that works, as measured by the comparative numbers of mosquitoes captured in the area where the traps are set as opposed to those caught in the control area with no traps, the Caribbean and Thailand will be next in line for the trials.

Additional Resource: Mosquito trap targets females laying their eggs

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