Disease & Vector Studies III/Larval Control I
Disease & Vector Studies III/Larval Control I
West Nile virus is the most prevalent mosquito-borne virus of public health concern in the United States. Tremendous surveillance, control, and research efforts are exerted nationwide to reduce WNV transmission in the enzootic cycle in hopes of preventing spillover of WNV into human populations. Despite these efforts, it is difficult to link results from mosquito control operations to results from WNV surveillance operations. One main issue limiting the success of studies evaluating entomological and epidemiological endpoints of mosquito control programs is that spatial and temporal replication of control and surveillance data sets are often short in duration and limited in spatial extent. Given the combined spatial and temporal extent of the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District’s (MMCD) surveillance and control programs, we developed a series of spatiotemporal quantitative analyses to estimate population-level reductions in Culex pipiens mosquitoes stemming from mosquito control operations in catch basins and non-catch basins habitats. Our central hypothesis is that reductions in host-seeking Culex spp. mosquitoes are scale dependent, and that reductions in adult collections associated with larval control are likely detectable within one to three weeks of applied interventions and are proportional to the density of treated basins and the frequency of larvicide applications near a trapping location. To partially answer this hypothesis, we will present the challenges and solutions to aligning multiple data streams and identifying appropriate computational methodologies to link control of larval mosquitoes more effectively to reductions in adult collections.