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The Miami-Dade County Mosquito Control and Habitat Management Division places a premium on monitoring more than 200 mosquito traps set throughout the area, dispatching a crew of environmental techs to retrieve catch samples from all of them on a weekly basis.
A team of lab technicians and biologists subsequently works to count, sort and identify (ID) the species retrieved. Recently, this dedication to data and science paid off in a very important way: the Aedes scapularis species was confirmed to have established a presence in Miami-Dade.
The surveillance team, led by research director Chalmers Vasquez, and biologist Johana Medina, worked with the University of Florida’s Florida Medical Entomology Lab (FMEL) scientist Dr. Lawrence Reeves to ID the out-of-area nuisance.
“The reporting of the Aedes scapularis can be of great medical and veterinary importance, as these mosquitoes are vectors of disease such as yellow fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and dog heartworm,” Vasquez said. “This also highlights the importance of South Florida as the point of entry of invasive species that might eventually lead to outbreaks of mosquito-transmitted diseases in our population.”
The finding of new species in South Florida means that the mosquito population is dynamic.
This validates the great work that the Miami-Dade team does on an ongoing basis, and proves the worth of partnerships with outside organizations such as FMEL, which physically hosted county personnel in workshop settings pre-pandemic at its Vero Beach laboratory.
The division also works locally with Drs. John C. Beier and Andre Wilke and the University of Miami’s Department of Public Health Sciences, and Dr. Matthew DeGennaro and the Florida International University’s Laboratory of Tropical Genetics/Florida Aegypti Genome Group.
The mosquito is found in much of tropical America, from central South America to northern Mexico and extreme southern Texas, as well as a few Caribbean islands. Previously, it was known in Florida only from three specimens collected in the Keys in 1945. Female Aedes scapularis feed from humans and a range of other animals, readily enter buildings and feed from human hosts indoors, and relatively few mosquito species do this.
“This collaboration with FMEL started in November 2019 by requesting assistance from Dr. Nathan Burkett-Cadena with a couple of different ID situations,” Medina said. “We received immediate guidance, and they are very knowledgeable and eager to assist. Also, they share helpful and informative material.”
Reeves, a molecular ecologist and research assistant professor at UF, whose specialty is mosquitoes and the pathogens they transmit, had this to say about the collaboration: “We are always happy to be of service to Florida’s mosquito control districts, particularly as we work towards understanding Florida’s native mosquitoes and arrivals of new non-native mosquito species to better protect Floridians from mosquitoes and the disease-causing pathogens they transmit.”
To read the full white paper on Aedes scapularis, visit bit.ly/AedesScapularisinMDC. For more information on Miami-Dade County’s mosquito mitigation efforts, visit miamidade.gov/mosquito.
