Abstract
Fluctuating population dynamics and shifting ranges, behavior, and phenology make monitoring of mosquito populations essential in controlling emerging pathogens. Despite ~1000 US mosquito control agencies, there is no centralized collation of their data. We provide a roadmap for the creation of a National Vector Surveillance System, for mosquito control agencies to routinely report standardized data. We characterized the extent of current monitoring, and collated mosquito abundance between 2009-2016. Despite a minority of agencies publically reporting data, our data set consists of records on >12 million mosquitoes. We demonstrate the utility of a National Vector Surveillance System by providing novel insight into nationwide mosquito ecology and show that Digital Epidemiology could provide indirect mosquito monitoring, with Google queries for “mosquito” covarying with mosquito abundance. We demonstrate a National Vector Surveillance System would provide a cost effective means to combat vector borne disease emergence and can be integrated with wide-scale Digital Epidemiology.
Major Subject Areas
Ecology
Epidemiology and Global Health
Footnotes
(Samuel.Rund{at}ed.ac.uk)
(micaelam{at}princeton.edu)
↵2 These authors were co–principal investigators.