Backyard comfort can be
had by controlling mosquitoes
Lets talk about that annoying insect,
mosquitoes.
As the mosquito season gathers momentum, an
enormous amount of consumer interest continues to be generated by the
marketing of new devices designed to attract, then either trap or kill,
mosquitoes. The general idea is to reduce the number of questing
mosquitoes that would otherwise be afflicting the homeowner. Many
products, by extension, claim to significantly reduce or even collapse
local mosquito populations by decreasing the number of egg-laying
females through their capture.
Power supplies for each type of
mosquito trap varies. Some are totally
self-contained, utilizing propane to provide both power and a source of
carbon dioxide as an attractant. These units have the advantage of
portability, allowing them to be placed at a considerable distance away
from home-sites. This may be an important consideration on larger
properties, i.e. those over an acre in area, by allowing mosquitoes to
be intercepted long before they come into the vicinity of human
activity. This portability comes at a price, though, for the
thermoelectric generator that uses excess heat from the combustion
process to generate electricity to run the intake fans is quite
expensive. Most units rely upon power cords utilizing AC outlets. This
limits them somewhat to smaller areas served by extension cords, but
their price is commensurately less than their self-contained
counterparts.
All of these traps utilize some form of attractant that lures the
host-seeking female mosquitoes to a capture or killing device. In some
cases, mosquitoes are captured by an impellor fan that draws them into a
net, where they desiccate. Other trapping systems use a sticky surface
to which the mosquitoes adhere when they land. Still others utilize an
electric grid to electrocute mosquitoes drawn into contact. These are
not set-and-forget devices - each requires some level of maintenance,
i.e. capture nets need emptying, adhesive boards require replacement and
grids require cleaning, to ensure their continued effectiveness,
particularly in areas of high catch.
Several of the trapping systems include a separate
device designed to reduce human attractiveness to questing female
mosquitoes, thus making the attractants in the capturing device placed
elsewhere more effective. These masking devices usually consist of a
plastic casing enclosing a fan powered by 2 AA batteries. The fan helps
distribute a plume of a proprietary substance that ostensibly masks
human odors to mosquitoes. Thus, female mosquitoes do not recognize
humans within the area as food sources. These devices are appropriate
for patio use, but the manufacturer’s recommended number based upon
square footage may need to be doubled in order to receive desirable
results.
Studies are currently underway to provide insight into the comparative
efficiency of many of these trapping devices on the market. With the
continual introduction of improved trapping models onto the consumer
market, it’s unlikely that this research will provide a definitive
winner over the long term. Nonetheless, they should provide a snapshot
of which systems capture more mosquitoes in head-to-head competition
under identical conditions.
Please be cautioned against putting too much faith in traps as your sole
means of control. These traps represent an evolving technology that is a
most welcome addition to our mosquito control armamentarium. Their
potential is great, but shouldn’t be overestimated. It’s highly unlikely
that these devices, whatever their improvements, will ever fully
supplant organized community-wide mosquito control programs, for there
is no single silver bullet that will prove to be the ultimate answer to
mosquito problems. Effective mosquito management requires integrating a
variety of available control strategies i.e. surveillance, source
reduction, biological control methods, traps, environmentally friendly
larvicides, and, when necessary, application of public health
adulticides, into a comprehensive program that exploits known mosquito
vulnerabilities. They are the result of almost one hundred years of
experience in making mosquito control in the United States the safest
and most technically proficient in the world today.
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