Archives of Zoological Studies Category: Agriculture Type: Review Article
Novel Physical and Computer-Based methods for Adult Mosquito Pest Control and Monitoring
- Thorsten Schwerte1*
- 1 Institute Of Zoology, University Of Innsbruck, Techniker Str. 25, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
*Corresponding Author:
Thorsten SchwerteInstitute Of Zoology, University Of Innsbruck, Techniker Str. 25, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Tel:+43 51250751862,
Email:Thorsten.Schwerte@uibk.ac.at
Received Date: Nov 23, 2017 Accepted Date: Jan 07, 2018 Published Date: Jan 22, 2018
Abstract
Mosquitoes are a global danger with high impact on human health. They have a robust host seeking strategy and unusual flight dynamics. This review gives a short overview of the main threats of these tiny insects, points out its position in zoological model animals and discusses novel physical and computer-based methods for mosquito identification, killing, and monitoring. The focus is on applications using imaging systems, acoustical detection and lasers in combination with advanced signal analysis and processing. Furthermore, recent crowd data acquisition and theoretical modeling of human behavior and mosquito population/vector dynamics are discussed. The conclusion show, how future pest control strategies and devices can be optimized to end up in cost-efficient products for the broad market.
Keywords
INTRODUCTION
Mosquitoes - a global danger
There are three major reasons for the great danger of mosquitoes. First, female mosquitoes require a blood meal for proper development of their eggs and evolution gave them the tools to do this successful by use of their specialized mouth which enables them to puncture the human skin. Second, several mosquitoes are anthropophilic, meaning that their preferred host is humans. And third, mosquitoes carry a number of viruses or parasites without being affected themselves. A minor side effect of their host-seeking behavior is that they keep us from peaceful sleeping because even just their bites are harming and their hovering sounds make us awake. Altogether, the mosquito is a highly effective and mobile agent for transmitting dangerous diseases among the human population affecting health in multiple ways. In front of this background; it is not surprising that mosquitoes are in the top ten of zoological model animals in the past five years. In detail, Mosquitoes with Anopheles and Aedes are in front of Drosophila, Bee, Zebrafish, and Chicken (Table 1). To understand how to protect humans and farm animals from mosquitoes, zoologists and computer scientists did a good job by characterizing the behavior and morphology of these insects (and humans).
Rank |
Animal |
Hits |
|
Rank |
Animal |
Hits |
1 |
Mouse |
1796 |
|
23 |
Bee |
234 |
2 |
Fish |
1757 |
|
24 |
Zebrafish |
214 |
3 |
Insect |
1529 |
|
25 |
Chicken |
202 |
4 |
Rat |
1243 |
|
26 |
Cattle |
179 |
5 |
Bird |
1160 |
|
27 |
Moth |
178 |
6 |
Fly |
724 |
|
28 |
Dog |
192 |
7 |
Mosquito |
613 |
|
29 |
Reptile |
157 |
8 |
Drosophila |
543 |
|
30 |
Snake |
155 |
9 |
Beetle |
449 |
|
31 |
Monkey |
152 |
10 |
Rodent |
448 |
|
32 |
Catfish |
139 |
11 |
Lizard |
317 |
|
33 |
Sheep |
136 |
12 |
Anopheles sp. |
313 |
|
34 |
Carp |
132 |
13 |
Frog |
310 |
|
35 |
Butterfly |
127 |
14 |
Aedes sp. |
309 |
|
36 |
Trematode |
127 |
15 |
Worm |
301 |
|
37 |
Xenopus |
123 |
16 |
Spider |
299 |
|
38 |
Helminth |
122 |
17 |
Cat |
293 |
|
39 |
Crab |
121 |
18 |
Plasmodium |
285 |
|
40 |
Cichlid |
115 |
19 |
Bat |
268 |
|
41 |
Earthworm |
112 |
20 |
Snail |
246 |
|
42 |
C. elegans |
111 |
21 |
Tick |
245 |
|
43 |
Rabbit |
109 |
22 |
Ant |
235 |
|
44 |
Turtle |
101 |
MOSQUITO HOST SEEKING
MOSQUITO FLIGHT
Mosquito pest control
Novel physical and computer-based methods for mosquito pest control
Laser-based killing methods
Using lasers to kill mosquitoes can be dangerous for humans and environment as well. To keep the risk to burn the wrong things low laser positioning and beam properties are important. An experimental setup, which uses consumer optics (telescopic macro lens (Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 Macro) coupled to a beam splitter with a laser and a CCD camera co-aligned seemed to be suitable to investigate these parameters. With a setup like this, it was possible to determine the right laser spot size, wavelengths, power and pulse dosage suitable to kill a mosquito [15]. An invention that circumvents possible collateral damages is a device with one or more rotating circular laser pattern projectors in a perforated housing [16]. This device is similar to the well-known UV-traps but instead using use a high-voltage grid inside the housing it uses laser light to kill the insects. Compared to the photonic fence this device is smaller in size, being more suitable for household use.
A completely different attempt to kill mosquitoes is inspired by biomedical applications which target abnormal cells with nanoparticles. After that these cells can be eradicated by application of light. This method has been successfully transferred to whole organisms like C. elegans, mosquitoes and other insects which have been fed carbon nanotubes, gold nanospheres, gold nanoshells, or magnetic nanoparticles. These organisms can be injured with laser energies that are safe for humans [17]. This strategy seems to be capable to reduce the use of toxic agents in pest control of species where feeding of these particles is possible. An evaluation of the environmental impact of spreading out nanoparticles compared to toxicants should be topic of future publications.
Light-based trapping methods
Audio and light-based identification methods
To make a more detailed analysis of mosquito communication it is important to understand how they behave in the crowd. Industrial CMOS camera systems and digital image analysis have developed to powerful big data collection devices. With an open source development like a low-cost collective behavior quantification it is possible to not only focus on the tracking of individuals but on the behavior of a whole swarm of mosquitoes [27,28]. The next logical step will be to combine fast wide-field image acquisition and analysis with high-resolution pseudo-acoustic detection. This would combine the strength of high-resolution single animal behavior and swarm behavior at the same time.
Network-based acquisition of human behavior and vector occurrence for advanced modeling
The dynamics of a mosquito population depends heavily on climatic variables such as temperature and precipitation. There are theoretical models that show effects of rainfall on Culex mosquito population dynamics [36]. Maybe these models can be supported by field data based on mobile data acquisition in the future.
CONCLUSION
Although there are already smart ideas to enhance mosquito pest control, most of them are still in the prototype stage. One of the main problems is that different mosquito species behave in different ways and you cannot control them with a single strategy. In the end, it is always the amount of money needed that drives these decisions. The use of insecticides is not only bad for the environment but also expensive. New technologies can target mosquitoes in a more precise and more economical way but the technology itself is still very expensive. In several interviews with key researchers from Intellectual Ventures, it is always argued that most of these high-tech pest control systems work, but are too expensive for the broad market.
To design a product for the broad market it should be a good idea to make future pest control systems adaptable to different species and different geolocations. This can be solved with “deep learning” technologies like mosquito detection with neural networks and/or big data analysis of crowd data acquisition [37,38].
Good prediction models should be supported by big data sets and in the recent years, many countries have recognized that citizen science projects can be a powerful tool to collect them. Future pest control strategies can be optimized by the use of these models.
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Citation: Schwerte T (2018) Novel Physical and Computer-Based Methods for Adult Mosquito Pest Control and Monitoring. Archiv Zool Stud 1: 002.
Copyright: © 2018 Thorsten Schwerte, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
