Mosquito Ecology

Mosquitoes are vectors of disease to humans, spreading malaria to an estimated 260 million people and causing some 1 to 2 million deaths a year. Numerous methods have been devised to catch mosquitoes and many approaches employed to study their ecology and behaviour. This edition includes work on areas such as estimating adult survivorship and new sampling methods. It provides detailed descriptions and critical evaluations of traps and sampling methods that have been used to study egg, larval and adult populations. More information has been included on mosquito behaviour and ecology, such as how mosquitoes locate their hosts and are attracted to traps, larval aggregation and dispersal patterns, oviposition attractants and density dependant mortalities. New sections describe methods of remote sensing of larval habitats, blood-meal identification, forage ratios, measurements of vectorial capacity, and statistical considerations such as sample size.
This book is aimed at field workers concerned with mosquito surveillance and control who wish to update their knowledge on methods for sampling larval and adult populations; scientists working in the area of disease epidemiology who need to know the methods available for measuring mosquito survival rates and dispersal; those whose interest is in the ecology and population dynamics of mosquitoes who are looking for an introduction to the literature.