Citizen science provides a reliable and scalable tool to track disease-carrying mosquitoes.

ABSTRACT: Recent outbreaks of Zika, chikungunya and dengue highlight the importance of better understanding the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes across multiple spatio-temporal scales. Traditional surveillance tools are limited by jurisdictional boundaries and cost constraints. Here we show how a scalable citizen science system can solve this problem by combining citizen scientists' observations with expert validation and correcting for sampling effort. Our system provides accurate early warning information about the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) invasion in Spain, well beyond that available from traditional methods, and vital for public health services. It also provides estimates of tiger mosquito risk comparable to those from traditional methods but more directly related to the huma

SUBMITTER: Palmer JRB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5655677 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature