Project Title: Targeting swarms and mosquito nocturnal behaviours to control outdoor malaria transmission
Project Description: A swarm refer to the collection of mosquitoes that fly in a cohesive stationary cloud, usually less than 1 m radius after sunset in a given day. Female Anopheles mosquitoes find the male swarm in order to mate. When female Anopheles approaches the swarm, they leave in copula. Anopheles gambiae mates in flight at particular mating sites over specific landmarks known as swarm marker. Swarming flight is precisely controlled by visual boundaries of a marker.... A swarm refer to the collection of mosquitoes that fly in a cohesive stationary cloud, usually less than 1 m radius after sunset in a given day. Female Anopheles mosquitoes find the male swarm in order to mate. When female Anopheles approaches the swarm, they leave in copula. Anopheles gambiae mates in flight at particular mating sites over specific landmarks known as swarm marker. Swarming flight is precisely controlled by visual boundaries of a marker. Our proposed project aims to test and improve a new, community-based and environmentally sustainable method for breaking malaria transmission in Africa, which will target the swarming and outdoor nocturnal behaviours of Anopheles mosquitoes. This will involve accurate identification and targeted spraying of mosquito swarms, so as to suppress adult vector populations and vectorial capacities, by altering age structure sex composition and mating behaviours of these mosquitoes. The project will conducted in Ulanga district Tanzania. Our proposed intervention will be understand its impact on: a) the densities, survival, age structure and vectorial capacities of the adult vector populations, but also on overall malaria transmission, measured as the number of infectious anopheles bites per site per year, b) the ability to achieve the targets by relying on trained community volunteers and c) overall social acceptance of the technology by community members. Emphasis will be given to a targeted space spraying approach that specifically targets swarms in the interventions villages, but this will be directly compared against conventional best management practises of area wide space spraying, which targets all nocturnal behaviours. This project will offer a previous untested control method, but will be perfectly complementary to ongoing interventions. The plan is to test strategy as complementary tool alongside LLINs and with active community engagement, which will also involve training of community based volunteers to help identify characterize, and map malaria vector swarms, then control these swarms through targeted spraying with effective insecticides.
Principal Investigator : Fredros Okumu
Department Name : EHES
Time frame: (2016-04-05) - (2018-06-30)
Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC) (Normal)
External Collaborating Partners
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