Despite its tiny size, mosquitoes cause about 700 million infections and more than one million deaths each yearmaking them the deadliest animal in the world. As only a small percentage of the species of these insects transmit disease, their surveillance and detection is essential.
To address this persistent threat of mosquito-borne disease, researchers at the University of South Florida (USF, USA) monitoring control board Global Mosquito Observation Board (GMOD) monitors its presence in the world in real time.
“It is very important to track these mosquitoes on a global scale because they know no political borders. With travel and trade spreading these disease vectors into new areas, this is truly an international problem that needs global attention. For example, the deadly urban vector of malaria, anofel stephensiIt’s already established in regions like India, but has recently invaded the African continent and is posing enormous danger there, a threat that is already beginning to emerge”, USF’s Ryan M. Carney and co-author of this initiative emphasizes SINC.
Project takes three citizen science apps, one in Spanish, as a starting point: Mosquito Alert (MA). Through these apps, people from all over the world use their smartphones to provide photos of mosquitoes.
The solution of integrating information from this app, along with NASA’s GLOBE Observer and iNaturalist from the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic, in a single panel has proven to be scalable and effective, according to those responsible in a study by the journal. vermin.
“It is strictly web-based by design and is a dashboard accessible from any browser. – from desktop computer to smartphone or tablet – this eliminates the need for an app. We also want people to be able to access it simply by typing the URL, without having to download anything,” says Carney.
By combining international data, the dashboard has the potential to provide data at a frequency and geographic resolution that would otherwise be impossible due to high costs and many other constraints.
“This tool will help mosquito control personnel seeking and destroying invasive species and tracking disease vectors internationally using georeferenced computers that people carry in their pockets every day: smart phones“Carney adds.
Diseases with a lack of vaccines and tools
There is a growing universal need to increase and maintain mosquito surveillance worldwide. general lack of vaccines and accessible treatments. Current current data aim to help scientists, mosquito control personnel and policy makers detect disease vectors early.
“The big advantage of citizen science when it comes to mosquitoes is that people don’t have to go out to look for the species, instead it’s usually these insects that come to humans, which makes it easier for almost any citizen with a cell phone and an app to detect the presence of a mosquito or take a bite. However, the diversity of platforms also create data diversity, both the way they are obtained and how they are verified and classified. The importance of the new project is to try to combine observations of the three applications, Alex Richter-Boix, biologist and communications technician at CREAF, who is part of the Mosquito Alert team, told SINC.
To test the effectiveness of citizen science in mosquito surveillance, Carney and a team of three USF students asked volunteers to focus on the main vectors of Zika, yellow fever, dengue, and Chikungunya.
Citizens not only managed to find the vectors, but also showed their efforts. It led to the first iNaturalist observations in the USA. Aedes scapularis, an invasive species that causes yellow fever. The documents were shared with local vector control authorities in Texas and served as a model for tracking in Florida, where the species was recently introduced.
“In the case of the Mosquito Alert, we were also able to detect the presence of invasive species in places where they were not known to be found by conventional methods. This is the case of tiger mosquitoes in the Autonomous Communities in their time, where there were no records or records. Japanese mosquito discovery in Spain north of the peninsula,” says Richter-Boix.
Artificial intelligence at the service of global health
In addition to location information, citizen science also provides valuable photos such as mosquito adults, larvae, or their breeding habitat, i.e. standing water where they lay their eggs.
Inside second part of the projectUSF engineering professor Sriram Chellappan will lead the training and testing efforts artificial intelligence algorithms (AI) to create image recognition software. It’s scheduled to launch this fall and will be used to identify mosquito species in uploaded citizen science images.
“These images are important for the initial training of our AI algorithms, and then AI can be applied to incoming photos to identify species. It’s fundamental,” Carney emphasizes.
Location-based identification also helps them track invasive mosquito species and monitor their expansion due to international travel and trade or climate change.
“By leveraging data at a global scale, we can gain insights to train AI that we wouldn’t otherwise have. For example, he aedes vittatus It is invasive in the New World, but we were able to leverage photos of this Old World species through the Mosquito Alert team to train our species identification algorithm,” says the scientist.
Adds Richter-Boix: “Combination of data from different projects Can fill in the gaps of specific projects by having different user profiles acting in different environments. Combining all the data also makes it visible which areas are under-covered or lacking information, as in some parts of Africa. This is the situation in Ethiopia, a critical location due to the recent presence of an invasive mosquito that transmits malaria in cities”.
Campaign against the spread of malaria in Africa
The fact is that the situation some of these mosquitoes got worse. This situation anofel stephensian invasive species that poses a unique danger, as it is a vector of malaria in cities: it breeds in artificial water containers near human dwellings. “Lately invaded Africaand it is feared to cause unprecedented epidemics in urban areas. This nightmare scenario is already starting to emerge in Ethiopia this year,” says Carney.
The team has already released beta versions of some of its AI tools in the works (mosquitoID.org), hoping they can be useful in detecting and detecting. Tackling this urgent problem. Citizens of this continent are encouraged to share photos of mosquitoes on Mosquitoes In Africa to help spot them.
If it is not checked there, it will put it. Malaria risk to 126 million people. This is why countries are on high alert and are acting to eradicate this species through surveillance and then emergency control. But the main problem is that it is difficult to detect, especially in the larval stage.
The threat of these mosquitoes to Spain
surveillance function The arrival of invasive species is particularly important in Spain.Detected tiger mosquitoes in various Communities such as Andalusia and Aragon and managed to detect the presence of another invasive mosquito in 2018, Aedes japonicusEritja says that “no one was waiting for her” on the Cantabrian coast. These achievements are due to the very high sampling potential of the MA system, the presence of a person with a mobile phone is sufficient to obtain data from anywhere.
On the contrary, official entomological sampling campaigns are limited to a few locations not scalable to the rest of the region as it requires presumed entry points, personnel and fixed technical equipment.
The main threat to Europe right now (and Spain is at the forefront in many ways) is the arrival of Europe. aedes aegypti, yellow fever mosquito. An even more annoying bug Aedes albopictusbecause it enters other homes and only attacks humans, but is also a more effective vector for dengue fever in particular.
“As relevant data, this strain was present on Spanish soil in the 17th and early 20th centuries, as it was periodically imported on ships bringing goods from the Americas with viruses and caused significant outbreaks from mooring ports. Over 300,000 deaths from yellow fever and dengue fever in 50 years” emphasizes the researcher.
Current socioeconomic conditions are very different, and an event of this magnitude would not have been predictable, which does not mean that its re-emergence would be “gloomy news” for the scientist.
parallel A. albopictus Y aegyptiother invasive mosquitoes threat to Europecontain oh japonicus (already detected in Spain) and oh korean. Mosquito Alert and its expert entomologists direct efforts to help citizens identify any of these species on arrival, if that’s the case, by verifying every photo that comes into the system. “In addition, the large database being created allows modelers to study the ecology of the vector’s movement and create predictive risk maps,” Eritja concludes.
Global Mosquito Board web address: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/7228a5a27442468494caec2934c2b73d
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Environment department contact address:[email protected]
Source: Informacion
