Newswise — Few things are more constant in New Orleans than the ubiquitous mosquito. Mosquito season is here again, says Tulane medical entomologist Dawn Wesson, and this year she recommends that in addition to the usual precautions ( http://www2.tulane.edu/article_news_details.cfm?ArticleID=3128 ), locals take stock of the construction materials and debris in their area.
Buckets and tarps are among the items that can provide mosquitoes with attractive breeding grounds. Turn over buckets and straighten, tighten or store away tarps so they do not collect water, says Wesson.
"The kind of stuff people don't even think about is breeding mosquitoes," says Wesson. "We should all watch for anything that collects standing water in little pools."
Residents who have not cleaned their swimming pools yet should do so now. Introducing "mosquito fish" (Gambusia affinis) to pools is one way to control the larval population. Another environment-friendly and commercially available method is the use of 'mosquito dunks,' which contain a bacterial toxin lethal to mosquito larvae but safe for vertebrate animals. For those who don't care for fish in their pools, Wesson recommends draining out all the water and adding chlorine to any remaining puddles to discourage breeding.
Although the mosquito population plummeted in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it soon rebounded. Wesson believes this will be a normal mosquito season and predicts that the numbers of West Nile cases will mirror previous years. Recent mosquito collections, some of them conducted in and near abandoned swimming pools, showed the presence of a mosquito more commonly found west of Louisiana. Wesson's graduate student Kevin Caillouet did the collections, using Google's pre-Katrina satellite maps to show where New Orleans swimming pools were located.
"Right after Katrina, all the pools were the same grey green as the rest of New Orleans. But on the pre-Katrina Google maps, they were still crystal blue," says Wesson. Caillouet shared his method of mapping potential breeding grounds with the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board, which has mounted a major effort to control mosquito breeding in abandoned swimming pools, says Wesson.
The return of mosquito season also means Wesson's research season picks up again. Wesson and her team have to recreate their collections of frozen stored specimens, which were decimated when the labs lost power after Hurricane Katrina. She is seeking graduate and undergraduate student workers interested in being paid for 20 hours of mosquito collection work a week.
Later this summer Wesson will also be testing a small, portable mosquito trap in the Uptown area.
RSS