Citizen complaints in local media as source of mosquito data: the case of Aedes albifasciatus in an intermediate city of temperate Argentina

Abstract

Floodwater mosquitoes provoke nuisance due to their mass emergence. Citizencomplaints about outstanding events of mosquitoes in urban areas are usually reflectedin local media and could be potentially used as data. Our objective was to build atemperature dependent function to characterize the immature development time ofthe floodwater mosquito Ae. albifasciatus in Tandil (Argentina), and validate it usingcitizen complaints in local media and field collected mosquitoes. The development timeobtained ranges from 5-47 days at 30-7° C, respectively. During 2000-2021, nine mosquitoabundance peaks were identified through local journalistic records. For these events,the estimated hatching date was successfully associated with a previous precipitation,with a maximum difference of two days. The precipitation identified as the trigger foregg hatching ranged from 15 to 121 mm. Then, to associate mosquito news with thetarget species, female mosquitoes were captured by a battery-powered aspirator ingreen areas of the city during September 2019-June 2021. Six mosquito abundance peakswere detected in which Ae. albifasciatus accounted for 97.3% of the captures. Amongthem, journalistic records were able to detect the largest two; i.e. in our study above 15mosquitoes in a five minute collection. Citizen complaints related to nuisance or vectorspecies could be valuable retrospective data for researchers of different fields.