Monitoring programs are often expensive and laborious, requiring teams to set and verify traps, along with specialists who can identify, classify and analyze samples. While some traps attract female mosquitoes with “smelly water” loaded with decaying organic material, others require dry ice to release carbon dioxide that mosquitoes sniff out when hunting mammals. But in rural New York, dry ice can be hard to come by: the team had to make their own.
Even beyond the logistical and resource challenges, communication, coordination, and data sharing for mosquito monitoring can be a challenge.
“One of the problems with states that are not comprehensively implementing these surveillance programs is that surveillance is unpredictable,” Leydet said. “A lot of these surveillance programs are run by the counties and they don’t really talk to each other.”
Leydet’s lab found that this mosaic system means that some species of invasive mosquitoes go unnoticed.
Funding is another challenge for better surveillance. “If the county doesn’t have money or resources, these programs fade away,” Leydet said. “If we don’t have these surveillance programs, then all we’re doing is responding to a problem when it already is a problem, and that’s never how prevention works.”
That could change with an invoice introduced in the New York State Legislature this session, which would lay the groundwork for a comprehensive mosquito surveillance program, instead of what the bill calls the current “sparse and disintegrated” system, to help public health officials respond before an outbreak.
Proactive measures may include removing puddles of standing water, applying specific larvicides in breeding habitats, and warning the public to use insect repellent and cover bare skin when outdoors, although outbreaks may require broader spraying with pesticides.
Leydet said more centralization would be a start, but widespread coordination in large states like New York can be a challenge: “There’s general interest in these programs, but when you start looking at what they cost, it’s like, ‘Maybe we’re not that interested.'”
Still, he said, “any help is better than none.”
This article originally appeared in Insider climate newsa nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Subscribe to their newsletter here.
