Team

About the project


Background

Mosquitoes are a worldwide pest and source of infections for several harmful diseases, which gives the necessity to control them in many places. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most suffering regions, but globalization and climate change let mosquitoes become a problem also in areas previously unaffected.

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A new control strategy

Conventional strategies usually base upon pesticide treatments, sometimes also upon the introduction of  predators. Since 2005 a novel strategy for mosquito control has been developed at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH - UFZ, which combines the use of competitors for food and the application of a biological insecticide against mosquito larvae. The procedure is environmentally friendly and shows a relatively long action time.

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Feasibility study

In the frame of this project the adaptability of the novel control strategy is tested in a real world situation at Lake Victoria in Kenya. Mosquito scouts are trained and the results are presented to gonvernmental and non-governmental stakeholders to integrate the method into existing and future control programs.

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Africa

Recent publications

Meyabeme A, Duquesne S, Liess, M. 2010

Influence of competing and predatory invertebrate taxa on larval populations of mosquitoes in temporary ponds of wetland areas in Germany. Journal of Vector Ecology 35 (2): 419-427.

Duquesne S., Kroeger I., Kutyniok M., Liess M. 2011

The Potential of Cladocerans as Controphic Competitors of the Mosquito Culex pipiens. J. Med. Entomol. 48 (3): 554-560.

International Bureau of the BMBF