Mosquito Vectors Aedes to Zika
Hi all,
I am starting this iNaturalist project to gather all the observations of medically important mosquito species into one place. For now let's focus on Aedes mosquitoes responsible for the expanding Zika epidemic now declared a public health emergency. The primary species to worry about is the Yellow-fever Mosquito, Aedes aegypti.
Also of concern is the more widespread Asian Tiger Mosquito, Aedes albopictus. Other mosquito genera that vector significant human pathogens will be hi-lit here: Anopheles, Culex, Culiseta, Haemagogus and Ochlerotatus.
We will happily host any mosquito species record as well because it important to understand which species are not a problem for humans, so generally improving the understanding of the status and distribution of non-vector species is also important.
Please see the project that has been running for a while to get more information until it is added/updated over here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/mosquitoes-in-hawaii
Stay safe!
Durrell
Durrell D. Kapan, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability
California Academy of Sciences
Comments
Thanks for starting this! I'm going to try to document all of the mosquitos that I find in my house in DC. First one of the season here: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2756395
Are you also interested in audio files for this project?
Apparently this project is set to automatically rope in any observation which gets initially identified as a mosquito. However, it appears to include a large and growing number of non-mosquitoes as well, most of which have had their identifications corrected on the individual observation. Apparently the project lacks the ability to automatically exclude an observation which turns out to be not a mosquito, or not a dipteran, or not an insect. As a result of this, plus the tendency of novice naturalists to uncritically accept iNat's top ID suggestion, the project now includes a single-celled organism, a sea spider, dozens of non-culicid flies, many hemipterans, several spiders, and at least one recent observation of what appears to be a beer can.
I hate the Identotron.
I hope my observations don’t lead to widespread spraying. They get a little carried away with it in my parts.
This is an awesome project! I found out about it just then when my observation of a Hexham Gray mosquito (Aedes alternans) was added by curators.
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