Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association (2007) 23, 99-108

Mirta Sudari Bogojevi, Tomislav Hengl and Enrih Merdi (2007)
Spatiotemporal monitoring of floodwater mosquito dispersal in Osijek, Croatia
Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association 23 (2), 99-108
Abstract: This paper demonstrates the possibility of using geostatistics to monitor the dispersal of mosquitoes for mosquito control programs at the municipal level. The case study objective was to quantify the dispersal of floodwater mosquitoes from the natural marshland Kopackirit into the city of Osijek, Croatia, and to analyze the main factors controlling it. Fifty thousand adult Aedes vexans, Ochlerotatus sticticus, and Ochlerotatus caspius mosquitoes were marked with a powdered fluorescent pigment and released from the southern part of Kopackirit on April 28, 2004. Forty CO₂-baited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traps were set in the area of the municipality of Osijek (171 km²) and were monitored for 10 days. A total of 582,471 mosquitoes were captured and examined in the laboratory. The mosquito counts from different sites were then interpolated using ordinary kriging and visualized dynamically to detect the dominant migrational directions. Mosquito dispersal and frequency were greatly influenced by wind speed (r = 0.82). The marked mosquitoes were found at 12 sites located from 1 km to 11.7 km away from the release point. The recapture rate was 0.044% (54% Oc. sticticus, 32% Ae. vexans, and 14% Oc. caspius). Based on the Lincoln index, the estimated total population size for floodwater mosquitoes in the study area ranged from 875 million to 2.0 billion mosquitoes. Limitations of the approach, recommendations for the improvement of the monitoring network, and spatial predictions are further discussed.
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Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
population dynamics/ epidemiology

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Aedes vexans		Croatia
	Aedes caspius		Croatia
	Aedes sticticus		Croatia