A low-cost, battery-powered acoustic trap for surveilling male Aedes aegypti during rear-and-release operations

August A low-cost, battery-powered acoustic trap for surveilling male Aedes aegypti during rear-and- release operations Brian J. Johnson 0 1 Barukh B. Rohde 0 1 Nicholas Zeak 0 1 Kyran M. Staunton 0 1 Tim Prachar 1 Scott A. Ritchie 0 1 0 College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, James Cook University , Cairns, Queensland , Australia , 2 Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University , Cairns, Queensland , Australia , 3 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America, 4 Verily Life Sciences , South San Francisco, California , United States of America 1 Editor: Lark L. Coffey, University of California Davis , UNITED STATES The Aedes aegypti mosquito is a primary vector of several serious arboviruses throughout the world and is therefore of great concern to many public health organizations. With vector control methodology pivoting towards rearing and releasing large numbers of genetically modified, sterilized, or Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes to control vector populations, economical surveillance methods for release tracking becomes increasingly necessary. Previous work has identified that male Ae. aegypti are attracted to female wingbeat frequencies and can be captured through artificial playback of these frequencies, but the tested systems are cost-prohibitive for wide-scale monitoring. Thus, we have developed a simple, lowcost, battery-powered, microcontroller-based sound lure which mimics the wingbeat frequency of female Ae. aegypti, thereby attracting males. We then tested the efficacy of this lure in combination with a passive (non-powered) gravid Aedes trap (GAT) against the current gold-standard, the Biogents Sentinel (BGS) trap, which requires main power (household power) and costs several times what the GAT does. Capture rates of male Ae. aegypti in sound-baited GATs (Sound-GATs) in these field tests were comparable to that of the BGS with no inhibitory effects of sound playback on female capture. We conclude that the Sound-GAT is an effective replacement of the costly BGS for surveillance of male Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, particularly in the developing countries where funding is limited, and has the potential to be adapted to target males of other medically important species. - Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program to B.B.R. under Grant No. DGE-1315138 and an international travel allowance through the Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW). We further acknowledge the financial and logistical support of Verily Inc., the Commonwealth Scientific and Introduction The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the primary vector of dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever viruses, causing millions of cases of these mosquito-borne illnesses each year [1±3]. Traditional wide-scale application of insecticides has largely failed to control dengue [ 4 ], particularly as the public's tolerance for mass spraying wanes and resistance to commonly-used pesticides such as deltamethrin and pyrethroids becomes common in Ae. aegypti [ 5, 6 ]. Industrial Research Organisation, and The World Mosquito Program. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work was also funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship (1044698) to S.A.R. Funding in the form of fellowships provided salary support for S.A.R. and a travel stipend for B.B.R., as well as materials, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the 'author contributions' section. Competing interests: S.A.R. receives a small royalty from sales of the BG-GAT. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The other authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Instead, ªrear and releaseº methods of vector control [ 7 ], involving the rearing and release of effectively sterile or genetically modified mosquitoes to suppress vector populations or virus transmission, have become increasingly popular [8±10]. Programs focusing on population suppression through the release of Wolbachia-infected (e.g. Verily Debug Project [ 11 ] and MosquitoMate [ 12 ]), genetically modified (Oxitec [ 13 ]) or irradiated males (IAEA [ 9, 14 ]), require the ability to monitor wild and released males to effectively manage their releases. Unfortunately, because most commercially available traps are designed to capture either hostseeking or oviposition-ready females, accurate estimates o (...truncated)