Leave Organic Waste In Place To Control Mosquitoes!

Leave organic waste in place to control mosquitoes, Canadian researchers say!

"Catch basins are a permanent source of mosquitoes on every street. By putting S-methoprene in cleaned catch basins we saw an average of 20 per cent of the mosquito larvae make it to the adult stage over the duration of the study. But that number was reduced to less than 3 per cent just by leaving the organic debris in the catch basins until the fall, when mosquito season is over," says Norman Yan, a professor in Department of Biology, York University, Toronto.

Yan and former York master's student Stacey Baker (MSc '08) co-authored a study published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association. They were surprised by the results of the research, conducted by Baker in 2005 on residential streets in the Greater Toronto Area.

"We predicted that S-methoprene would work better in the catch basins that had been cleaned. We found the opposite - that S-methoprene binds to organic material, which holds it in the catch basins longer so that mosquito larvae are exposed to it for longer," says Baker.

S-methoprene is used by many municipalities in Canada to control mosquito populations as a primary means of fighting West Nile Virus. The larvicide is added to hundreds of thousands of catch basins.
Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association.



Source: Medindia