Sarasota County, FL
Home MenuAdult Mosquito Surveillance
Adult mosquito surveillance is a necessary process for mosquito management districts to help understand mosquito populations throughout jurisdictions. This is to help understand:
- Are there mosquitoes present?
- If so, what kind?
- And if so, how dense is their population?
To answer these questions, mosquito management districts use CDC-Light traps as the standard method of capturing many common mosquito species.
These traps work by attracting mosquitoes using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a bait. However, Sarasota County Mosquito Management uses specially modified traps to ensure a regulated release of CO2 from tanks. Standard traps typically use dry ice, which may release CO2 at different rates based on environmental factors.
Various Functions of CDC-Light Traps
How is adult mosquito surveillance used?
The collection bags from all three of these traps are gathered early each morning and placed in the freezer, so the mosquitoes keep intact and are euthanized. Later that morning the mosquito population is identified, counted using a microscope, and recorded by our biologists.
The number of mosquitoes and the species determines what action is to be taken later that day. There is a minimum threshold of mosquitoes in a trap for an area to be treated and this threshold varies based on: mosquito population density, species of mosquito present, and whether the area is urban, suburban, or rural. Species that transmit disease and/or are more likely to bite humans have lower thresholds.
A daily "Mission Planning" meeting takes place to discuss that day's data, where a consensus is made whether any treatments are necessary based on the results of adult surveillance traps and disease monitoring results.