Equipment/New Product Trials
Equipment/New Product Trials
The capability to rear mosquitoes can be a vital process to use mosquitoes for studies in control methods, disease transmission, surveillance techniques and other areas related to the biology and control of these vectors. One requirement to rear most mosquitoes is to provide them blood to feed on. Using artificial membrane systems to present blood offers many benefits over live blood sources, however, many of these membrane systems can be expensive. The Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District set out to create an artificial membrane blood feeder for mosquitoes that would be inexpensive and easy for others to build while also being user friendly and effective at feeding a variety of mosquito species. The result of this research is the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District artificial membrane feeder (SLAM). We compared the effectiveness of the SLAM to a common commercially available membrane feeding system and had nearly identical results when looking at fecundity of mosquitoes as an outcome. The fabrication, cost, utility, features and feeding results will be discussed in this presentation with the goal that others interested in a cost effective blood feeding alternative can use these designs to enhance their own study of mosquitoes.