Survey of Mosquitoes on Lake Houston and surrounding Houston Areas
Abstract
After a move from a suburb in the Houston area to Lake Houston (Northeast of downtown Houston), it was observed that the mosquitoes during the summer seemed to be much more prominent on Lake Houston than previously in the suburb. This noticeable difference triggered the question of what types of mosquitoes preferred what kinds of locations and why. To understand and evaluate this question, a survey of various mosquito types across the Houston metropolitan areas was performed. Traps were set up in five cities of different environments, mainly varying in their proximity to specific environmental differences (i.e. lakes, woody areas, downtown etc.) Mosquitoes were collected over a weekend in April, a month reported to have one of the highest rates of mosquitoes present (Nava, 2016). Through research, it was determined that the most prevalent mosquito types in all of the Houston area were Culex species, Anopheles species and Aedes species. Each of this mosquito types have been reported in high numbers during the late Spring and Summer months in all of Houston, but there is little data on how each type is distributed in each area. Through the research, it was hypothesized that Anopheles species would be most prevalent in areas near water and was upheld by the data from the experiment. Knowing this information about the prevalence of certain types of mosquitoes in each area can better help create a mechanism for trapping in each place. Each types of mosquitoes are drawn to various things, for instance, Anopheles prefer to stay on standing water and knowing these preferences can be applied to a better prevention (Mosquito World). With the rise of many serious mosquito transmitted diseases like Zika and West Nile, knowing specifically what mosquitoes are in which area are helpful to each community in protecting themselves from these threats that are associated with each mosquito type.
References
Carrasco, P., and W. X. Shandera. 2012. The past and present of malaria in Houston. Tex Med . 1
Champion, S. R., and C. J. Vitek. 2014. Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus Habitat Preferences in South Texas, USA. Environmental Health Insights . 8: 35—42
Dennett, J. A., N. Y. Vessey, and R. E. Parsons. 2004. A comparison of seven traps used for collection of Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti originating from a large tire repository in Harris County (Houston), Texas. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association. 342—349.
(Mosquito Borne Diseases) Baylor College of Medicine. 2017. Baylor College of Medicine Online Database. (https://www.bcm.edu/departments/molecular-virology-and-microbiology/emerging-infections-and-biodefense/mosquitoes).
"Mosquitoes of Texas ." Agricultural and Environmental Safety. Texas A&M ARGILIFE Extension, Nov. 2015. Web. 01 May 2017.
(Mosquito World) Mosquito World. 2017. Mosquito World. (http://www.mosquitoworld.net/about-mosquitoes/habitats/).
Nava, M. R., and M. Debboun. 2016. A taxonomic checklist of the mosquitoes of Harris County, Texas. Journal of Vector Ecology . 190—194
Rios, J., R. Parsons, and C. S. Hacker. 2006. DEMOGRAPHIC AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF WEST NILE VIRUS AND ST. LOUIS ENCEPHALITIS IN HOUSTON, TEXAS. American Mosquito Control Association, Inc. 254—263
Roberts, D. M., and R. J. Irving-Bell. 1997. Salinity and microhabitat preferences in mosquito larvae from southern Oman. Journal of Arid Environments . 37: 497—504.
White, S. L., M. P. Ward, C. M. Budke, T. Cyr, and R. B. 2009. A Comparison of Gravid and Under-House CO2-Baited CDC Light Traps for Mosquito Species of Public Health Importance in Houston, Texas. Entomological Society of America. 1494—1497
W. L. Bidlingmayer 2007. Mosquito Flight Paths in Relation to the Environment. Effect of Vertical and Horizontal Visual Barriers. Ann Entomol Soc Am 1975; 68 (1): 51-57. doi: 10.1093/aesa/68.1.51
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Instars supports the need for authors to share, disseminate and maximise the impact of their research. We take our responsibility as stewards of the online record seriously, and work to ensure our policies and procedures help to protect the integrity of scholarly works.
License to the Journal. The Author hereby licenses to the Journal the irrevocable, nonexclusive, and royalty-free rights as follows:
a. The Journal may publish the Article in any format, including electronic and print media. Specifically, this license include the right to reproduce, publicly distribute and display, and transmit the Article or portions thereof in any manner, through any medium now in existence or developed in the future, including but not limited to print, electronic, and digital media, computerized retrieval systems, and other formats
b. The Journal may prepare translations and abstracts and other similar adaptations of the Article in furtherance of its publication of the Article.
c. The Journal may use the Author's name, likeness, and institutional affiliation in connection with any use of the Article and in promoting the Article or the Journal.
d. The Journal may exercise these rights directly or by means of third parties. The Journal may authorize third-party publishers, aggregators, and printers to publish the Article or to include the Article in databases or other services. [Examples of such third parties include Westlaw, Lexis, and EBSCO.]
e. The Journal may without further permission from the Author transfer, assign, or sublicense the rights that the Journal has pursuant to the Agreement.
f. In order to foster wider access to the Article, especially for the benefit of the nonprofit community, the Author hereby grants to the Journal the authority to publish the Article with a Creative Commons "Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives" license. [The Author should consult the Creative Commons website (www.creativecommons.org) for further information]
g. This liscense of rights to the Journal shall take effect immediately. In the event that the Journal does not publish the Article, this license to the Journal shall temrinate upon written notification by the Journal to the Author, or upon termination of all publication by the Journal. To the extent that moral rights may apply to the Article, this agreement does not affect the moral rights of the Author in or to the Article.
Rights of the Author. Without suggesting any limit on other rights that the Author may h ave with respect to the Article, the Author retains the following rights. To the extent that the Journal holds similar rights with respect to the Article consistent with this Agreement, the Author shall hold these rights on a nonexclusive basis. To the extent that the Article includes edits and other contributions by the staff of the Journal, the rights of the Author in this Paragraph include the right to use such edits and contributions.
a. The Author may publish the Article in another scholarly journal, in a book, or by other means. The Author may exercise this right of publication only after the date of first publication of the ARticle in the Journal in any format.
b. The Author shall, without limitation, have the right to use the ARticle in any form or format in connection with the Author's teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and for all of Author's academic and professional acitvities.
c. The Author shall at any time have the fright to make, or to authorize others to make, a preprint or a final published version of the ARticle available in digital form over the Internet, including, but not limited to, a website under the control fo the Author or the Author's employer or through digital repositories including, but not limited to, those maintained by scholarly societies, funding agencies, or the Author's employer. This right shall include, without limitation, the right of the Author to permit public access to the Article as part of a repository or through a service or domain maintained by teh Author's employing the institution or a service as required by law or by agreement with a funding agency. The Journal may in its discretion deposit the ARticle with any digital repository consisten with deposits permitted by the Author under ths paragraph. [Examples of such repositories include SSRN, arXiv.org, PubMed Central, and Academic Commons at Columbia University.]
d. Any of the foregoing permitted uses of the Article, or of a work based substantially on the Article, shall include an appropriate citation to the Article, stating that it has been or is to be published in the Journal, with name and date of the Journal publication and the Internet address for the website of the Journal.
Editing of the Article. This Agreement is subject to the understanding that the ordinary editing processes of the Journal will be diligently pursued and that the Article will not be published by the Journal unless, in tis final form, it is acceptable to the Author and the Journal.
