Post provided by ROY FAIMAN

Importance of Marking (Wild) Mosquitoes

Dr. Dao (crouching on right) and team with Dr. Tovi Lehmann (with sandals), Dr. Yaro (with white cap), and Moussa Diallo (front).

The fact that mosquitoes are insects of massive importance is of little dispute. With malaria still killing almost half a million people annually and after recent outbreaks of Zika, dengue and West-Nile viruses the threat of mosquito-borne diseases is becoming common knowledge. The meme of ‘Mosquitoes are the No.1 killer of all time,’ is also growing more popular (I even heard it from my 8-year-old kid one day after he returned from school!). Yet, with all we think we know about the little bug(ger)s, it’s probably only the tip of the iceberg.

Much work was done over the past century to try to answer basic questions about mosquitoes like:

• How big are their populations?
• How long do they live?
• Where do they go when we don’t see or feel them?

Different methods have been developed to provide insights and notions on the mosquitoes’ movements, survival, and populations estimates; but the limitations and conditions of these methods mean that our knowledge is still incomplete.

One of the gold-standard tools for answering questions like those above is Mark-Release-Recapture (MRR). It was developed almost a century ago and has been modified and remodified through the years, as different marking technologies became available. Continue reading →