Comparative evaluation of the Sticky-Resting-Box-Trap, the standardised resting-bucket-trap and indoor aspiration for sampling malaria vectors

Abstract

BackgroundUnderstanding mosquito resting behaviour is important for the control of vector-borne diseases, but this remains a challenge because of the paucity of efficient sampling tools. We evaluated two novel sampling methods in the field: the Sticky Resting Box (SRB) and the Resting Bucket trap (RBu) to test their efficiency for sampling malaria vectors resting outdoors and inside houses in rural Tanzania. The performance of RBu and SRB was compared outdoors, while indoors SRB were compared with the Back Pack Aspiration method (BP). Trapping was conducted within 4 villages in the Kilombero Valley, Tanzania over 14 nights. On each night, the performance for collecting Anopheles vectors and Culicinae was compared in 4 households by SRB and RBu outdoors and by SRB or fixed-time Back Pack aspirator in 2 of the 4 focal households indoors.FindingsA total of 619 Anopheles gambiae s.l., 224 Anopheles funestus s.l. and 1737 Culicinae mosquitoes were captured. The mean abundance of An. arabiensis and An. funestus s.l. collected with SRB traps inside and outdoors was significantly lower than with BP or RBu. The SRB however, outperformed BP aspiration for collection of Culicinae indoors.ConclusionsOf the methods trialled indoors (BP and SRB), BP was the most effective, whilst outdoors RBu performed much better than SRB. However, as SRB can passively sample mosquitoes over a week they could provide an alternative to the RBu where daily monitoring is not possible.

Modelling of the Abundance of Malaria Mosquitoes Using Poisson Mixed Model

“…The finding is in agreement with the results of [6]. Over four years of mosquito collection, 57% of mosquitoes collected indoor were A. funestus while 43% were A. gambiae.…”

“…Kreppel et al [6] used generalized linear mixed effects models (GLMM) in investigating the variation in proportion of malaria vectors. They considered A. gambiae and A. funestus within the total catch, fitted trap type as fixed effect and night, date and house as random effects.…”

Evaluation of resting traps to examine the behaviour and ecology of mosquito vectors in an area of rapidly changing land use in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

“…Similarly resting mosquitoes are usually targeted by aspiration of mosquitoes from the inside of house walls (e.g. Aedes [ 56 – 58 ] and Anopheles [ 59 ]) or pyrethrum spray catch indoors [ 60 ]. Whilst host-baited traps have shown some success for sampling mosquitoes host-seeking on animals and humans outdoors [ 61 – 66 ], there are few methods for sampling mosquitoes resting in forest or other non-domestic habitats.…”

“…This is inferred by analysis of the blood meal of recently fed females to identify host preference. There are several methods for sampling mosquitoes resting in and around the home [ 59 , 67 – 70 ] but these often give biased estimates of host choice by favouring humans and peridomestic animals [ 71 , 72 ]. These techniques are rarely used to sample mosquitoes in wilderness areas away from homes.…”

“…As yet, resting collections have largely been used to investigate diseases transmitted around the home, not ones that could be transmitted in forested habitats or that have a wild animal reservoir host. Recent work in Africa has evaluated standardized, portable and low-cost resting traps for collecting resting Anopheles in peridomestic settings [ 59 , 70 ]. These have yet to be trialled for sampling mosquitoes resting in forest and other non-domestic habitats.…”