Comparison of two adult mosquito sampling methods with human landing catches in south-central Ethiopia. (December 2017) - Kenea, Oljira
Abstract Background The human landing catch (HLC) is the standard reference method for measuring human exposure to mosquito bites. However, HLC is labour-intensive, exposes collectors to infectious mosquito bites and is subjected to collector bias. These necessitate local calibration and application of alternative methods. This study was undertaken to determine the relative sampling efficiency (RSE) of light traps with or without yeast-produced carbon dioxide bait vs. HLC in south-central Ethiopia. Methods The experiment was conducted for 39 nights in a 3 × 3 Latin square randomized design withAnopheles arabiensis as the target species in the period between July and November 2014 in Edo Kontola village, south-central Ethiopia. Center for Disease Control and Prevention light trap catches (LTC) and yeast-generated carbon dioxide-baited light trap catches (CB-LTC) were each evaluated against HLC. The total nightly mosquito catches for eachAnopheles species in either method was compared with HLC by Pearson correlation and simple linear regression analysis on log-transformed [log10 (x + 1)] values. To test if the RSE of each alternative method was affected by mosquito density, the ratio of the number of mosquitoes in each method to the number of mosquitoes in HLC was plotted against the average mosquito abundance. Results Overall, 7606Anopheles females were collected by the three sampling methods. Among these 5228 (68.7%) wereAnopheles ziemanni, 1153 (15.2%)An. arabiensis, 883 (11.6%)Anopheles funestus s.l., and 342 (4.5%)Anopheles pharoensis . HLC yielded 3392 (44.6%), CB-LTC 2150 (28.3%), and LTC 2064 (27.1%)Anopheles females. The RSEs of LTC and HLC forAn. arabiensis were significantly correlated (p < 0.001) and density independent (p = 0.65). However, for outdoor collection of the same species, RSEs of LTC and CB-LTC were density dependent (p < 0.001). It was estimated that on average, indoor LTC and CB-LTC each caught 0.35 and 0.44 times that of indoor HLC forAn. arabiensis respectively. Conclusions Results showed that HLC was the most efficient method for samplingAn. arabiensis . LTC can be used for large-scale indoorAn. arabiensis surveillance and monitoring when it is difficult to use HLC. CB-LTC does not substantially improve sampling of this major vector compared to LTC in this setting. Trial registration PACTR201411000882128 (retrospectively registered 8 September, 2014)