Citizen science mosquito surveillance projects
Over the past few years, a number of passive mosquito surveillance programmes have been set up to monitor current mosquito species occurrence, distribution and abundance. Within these, citizen science is becoming increasingly popular as a means to support scientific research.
The Mückenatlas, Germany
The Mückenatlas (Mosquito Atlas), launched in April 2012, is a nation-wide mosquito monitoring programme run by the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut and the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research. In this citizen science project, individuals are asked to collect mosquitoes in their private surroundings, freeze them and send them to the research institutes involved for identification. The submission data is fed into CULBASE, the German mosquito database.
Nationwide mosquito surveillance project , UK
The nationwide mosquito surveillance project, launched in 2005, was set up by Public Health England (PHE) in collaboration with a range of organisations across the country. The project aims to develop and update our understanding of the status, distribution and abundance of these potential endemic vector species. PHE is interested in receiving submissions from people affected by mosquito nuisance biting, in addition to having organisations run mosquito traps from April to October; samples are identified by PHE entomologists.
The Muggenradar, Netherlands
The Muggenradar (mosquito radar) was initially launched in 2014 as a citizen science project to study perceived nuisance by mosquitoes during winter. Run by Wageningen University, the project now accepts submissions from the public for a few weeks per year, to study mosquito nuisance and species distribution. @muggenradar
Mosquito alert, Spain
Mosquito Alert is a worldwide cooperative citizen science observatory coordinated by different public research institutions. Its main objective is to fight against the tiger mosquito and the yellow fever mosquito expansions, two invasive species vectors of global diseases like Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya. The project is cenetered around an app, through which anyone can report a possible finding of tiger mosquito or yellow fever mosquito and their breeding places by sending a photo, which is validated by a team of entomologists. The result of the validation is sent directly to the participant and published in an observation map.
iMoustique®, France
iMoustique® was launched in 2013 to support mosquito surveys across France. Developed by EID Atlantique, the iMoustique® mobile application uses a three step determination key for mosquito recognition, enabling citizens to identify and report on mosquitoes in their area. Pictures of mosquitoes can then be transmitted from the app for automatic entry in a database.
MosquitoWEB,Portugal
MosquitoWEB, launched in 2014 to complement other on-going surveillance projects in Portugal, is coordinated by IHMT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Based around a web tool, MosquitoWEB asks citizens to submit photos and physical mosquito specimens for identification. From this, MosquitoWEB provides updated information regarding the distribution areas, seasonality patterns and nuisance activity of native mosquito species, in addition to informing on newly arrived species.