Nationwide inventory of mosquito biodiversity (Diptera:Culicidae) in Belgium, Europe (original) (raw)
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Journal of Medical Entomology, 2013
Mosquito (Diptera: Culicidae) distribution data from a recent inventory of native and invading mosquito species in Belgium were compared with historical data from the period 1900 Ð1960 that were retrieved from a revision of the Belgian Culicidae collection at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Both data sets were used to investigate trends in mosquito species richness in several regions in Belgium. The relative change in distribution area of mosquito species was particularly important for species that use waste waters and used tires as larval habitats and species that recently shifted their larval habitat to artiÞcial larval habitats. More importantly, several of these species are known as vectors of arboviruses and Plasmodium sp. and the apparent habitat shift of some of them brought these species in proximity to humans. Similar studies comparing current mosquito richness with former distribution data retrieved from voucher specimens from collections is therefore encouraged because they can generate important information concerning health risk assessment at both regional and national scale.
MODIRISK: Mosquito vectors of disease, collection, monitoring and longitudinal data from Belgium
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The MODIRISK project studied mosquito biodiversity and monitored and predicted biodiversity changes, to actively prepare to address issues of biodiversity change, especially invasive species and new pathogen risks. This work is essential given continuing global changes that may create suitable conditions for invasive species spread and the (re-)emergence of vector-borne diseases in Europe. Key strengths of MODIRISK, in the context of sustainable development, were the links between biodiversity and health and the environment, and its contribution to the development of tools for describing the spatial distribution of mosquito biodiversity. MODIRISK addressed key topics of the global Diversitas initiative, which was a main driver of the Belspo ‘Science for a Sustainable Development’ research program. Three different MODIRISK datasets were published in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF): the Collection dataset (the Culicidae collection of the Museum of Natural History i...
A litmus test for harmonized mosquito monitoring across Europe and Africa
The accelerating rate of outbreaks from mosquito borne diseases are urging the development of updated and effective tools for the surveillance of insect populations and their larval habitats. Harmonized field protocols help to build a comprehensive picture on species-specific vector ecology and generate important knowledge for implementing coordinated mosquito surveillance programs at regional scales and across continents. In this study, we test the efficiency and potential barriers of available harmonized protocols from earlier EU project VectorNet. As a kind of litmus test for such protocols, we specifically aim to capture the ecoregional variation of breeding site characteristics and population density of five mosquito vectors in Europe and Africa. As expected, the five species considered show different aquatic habitat preferences. Culex pipiens, Aedes albopictus in Europe and Ae. aegypti in Africa select breeding habitats within specific volume classes, while Anopheles gambiae a...
Entomologica Fennica, 2011
Intensive larval samplings of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) were carried out between 2005 and 2008 in several biotopes located in a varying climate region in Eastern Spain. The biodiversity was analyzed and divided into alpha, beta and gamma components with the aim of comparing the mosquito biodiversity according to the different structure of the landscape due to the incidence of climatic and anthropic patterns. Likewise the synanthropic index of Nuorteva was calculated for each species. A total of 11,279 mosquitoes belonging to 29 species was collected and identified. Mosquito biodiversity is higher in the wettest and nonanthropized areas. Using a cluster analysis, all this information was also used to group the different regions studied depending on its mosquito fauna. Moreover the re-emergence of antroponosis, like malaria, seems unlikely given the low values of the synanthropic index for the anophelines captured.
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Population genetic studies of insect vectors can generate knowledge to improve epidemiological studies focused on the decrease of pathogen transmission. In this study, we used nine SNPs across the Aedes aegypti genome to characterize seasonal population variations of this important dengue vector. Mosquito sam-ples were obtained by ovitraps placed over Botucatu SP from 2005 to 2010. Our data show that, regardless of the large variation in mosquito abundance (deduced from the number of eggs obtained from ovitraps), the effective popu-lation size remained stable over the years. These results suggest that Ae. aegypti is able to maintain a sufficiently large active breeding population during the dry season to keep genetic frequencies stable. These results open new perspec-tives on mosquito survey and control methods.
Journal of Applied Ecology, 2020
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