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Mosquito Surveillance I

Mosquito Surveillance I

Mosquito Surveillance I

13 - Evaluating the ecological utility of hotspot surveillance versus a uniform grid-based approach in a WNV system

Tuesday, March 24, 2026
1:55 PM - 2:05 PM PDT
Location: B110
Abstract: The establishment and operation of mosquito surveillance sites is often driven by accessibility, cost, and logistics rather than ecological factors. As a result, surveillance networks focused on a single species or problem areas may provide limited inference about mosquito communities and their environmental contexts. While existing guidelines for vector control programs emphasize operational aspects, they rarely address or quantify how trap placement influences surveillance quality. To evaluate this, we compared two concurrent surveillance networks operated by the St. Tammany Parish Mosquito Abatement District (STPMAD) in Louisiana: a traditional hotspot-based arboviral network targeting Culex quinquefasciatus and a centroid-based grid network designed for unbiased spatial coverage. Focal comparisons included community detection, environmental representativeness, and predictive model performance under contrasting trap placement strategies. We analyzed mosquito collections from 106 sites across two study areas and characterized environmental conditions using climate, land cover, vegetation, soil, and socioeconomic variables. Community composition, environmental gradients, and extrapolation metrics were compared between trap types using multivariate analyses. Random forest abundance models were then trained and evaluated for Cx. quinquefasciatus, Cx. salinarius, and Cx. nigripalpus to assess predictive accuracy and spatial consistency. Arboviral traps captured higher mosquito abundances but a narrower set of species, while centroid traps detected greater community diversity and expanded environmental coverage. Extrapolation analyses showed that centroid inclusion significantly reduced environmental novelty, improving representativeness across the parish. Model performance for Cx. quinquefasciatus was comparable between designs, but predictions for Cx. salinarius and Cx. nigripalpus improved with greater centroid inclusion. These results demonstrate that surveillance design influences both ecological inference and model reliability. Reallocating a portion of arboviral surveillance effort toward spatially structured, unbiased trapping can enhance environmental representativeness, strengthen predictive capacity, and expand the ecological and operational value of mosquito surveillance networks.