10 - Back to the Future: Quantifying Wing Wear as a Method to Measure the Age Structure of Mosquito Populations

Rapid, easy, and high-throughput determinations of mosquito age structure is critical for determining the risk of mosquito populations for transmitting pathogens and for the measuring the efficacy of mosquito control interventions. Qualitative assessments of wing wear was the original method for assessing mosquito age, first described more than 100 years ago. We updated and quantified this method by applying machine vision to mosquito wing pictures and demonstrate how the method could be valuable to researchers, public health agencies and mosquito control operators.