This study reports the first evidence of resistance to pyrethroids in adult Italian Ae. albopictus populations. Results refer to the season preceding the Chikungunya 2017 outbreak in central Italy and highlight the need to increase efforts to monitor the spread of insecticide resistance and the need to develop strategies to limit the spread of insecticide resistance, particularly in areas where extensive treatments have been carried out to contain disease outbreaks. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

Mosquitoes represent a considerable nuisance and are actual/potential vectors of human diseases in Europe. Costly and labour-intensive entomological monitoring is needed to correct planning of interventions aimed at reducing nuisance and the risk of pathogen transmission. The widespread availability of mobile phones and of massive Internet connections opens the way to the contribution of citizen in complementing entomological monitoring. ZanzaMapp is the first mobile “mosquito” application for smartphones specifically designed to assess citizens’ perception of mosquito abundance and nuisance in Italy. Differently from other applications targeting mosquitoes, ZanzaMapp prioritizes the number of records over their scientific authentication by requesting users to answer four simple questions on perceived mosquito presence/abundance/nuisance and geo-localizing the records. The paper analyses 36,867 ZanzaMapp records sent by 13,669 devices from 2016 to 2018 and discusses the results with reference to either citizens’ exploitation and appreciation of the app and to the consistency of the results obtained with the known biology of main mosquito species in Italy. In addition, we provide a first small-scale validation of ZanzaMapp data as predictors of Aedes albopictus biting females and examples of spatial analyses and maps which could be exploited by public institutions and administrations involved in mosquito and mosquito-borne pathogen monitoring and control.

Peridomestic sprayings largely reduce mosquito populations immediately after treatment but fail to keep low mosquito abundance for a longer period, partially explaining the uncontrolled repetitions of treatments. An optimal control application could benefit from research in the field of additives to improve mosquito abatement and the performance of pyrethroids over time. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.

Culex pipiens (Linnaeus), one of the most abundant mosquito species in Europe, plays a crucial role in the endemic transmission of West Nile virus and caused the large outbreak with >1600 human cases in 2018. Although evidence of resistance to pyrethroids has been reported for Cx. pipiens populations from Spain and Greece, resistance monitoring has been largely neglected in Italy. Herein, we investigate susceptibility of Italian Cx. pipiens populations to the pyrethroids permethrin and deltamethrin. Results from WHOtube-bioassays revealed mortalities ranging from 14-54%, indicating high levels of resistance, in four out of 10 populations exposed to permethrin (0.75%) and of 63% in one of three populations exposed to deltamethrin (0.05%). Reduced susceptibility (mortal-ity<98%) was detected in almost all other populations. A clear association is shown between the resistant phenotype and the presence of kdr-alleles in position 1014 of the VSSC, strongly suggesting its role in reducing susceptibility. The study provides the first evidence of pyrethroid-resistance in Italian Cx. pipiens populations and reports levels of resistance paralleled in the European region only in Turkey. This highlights the urgent need to implement insecticide-resistance management plans to restore the efficacy of the nowadays only chemical weapon available to control arbovirus transmission in Europe.