Mosquito traps in developing countries

by admin
August 10, 2017 News

A new mosquito trap using a person’s smell combined with warm water could transform how mosquitoes are caught in developing countries. While using human body odor in traps is not new, the difference in this design is the right shape and temperature to encourage mosquitoes to land on the device.  Researchers choose a cylinder after conducting tests in a wind tunnel impregnated with human odor to see which shape would encourage mosquitoes to land.  Then they realized that the difference between inanimate objects and humans was temperature.  Developed at the United Kingdom’s University of Greenwich, the new technology is being developed with a grant from the U.K.’s Medical Research Council (MRC) as a way to replace human landing catches.  The prototype, built by Biogents, is being tested in Benin, Burkina Faso and Cameroon.   The long-term plan is to develop the trap as a way of steering mosquitoes away from houses during the night when they feed.   – Sourced from SciDevNet