Transforming entomology to adapt to global concerns: 2021 student debates.

The 2021 Student Debates of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) were held at the Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. The event was organized by the Student Debates Subcommittee (SDS) of the Student Affairs Committee (SAC). The theme of the 2021 Student Debates was "Transforming Entomology to Adapt to Global Concerns", with 3 topics. Each topic had an unbiased introduction and 2 teams. The debate topics were (i) Nonnative insect introduction is an ethical approach for counteracting proliferation and overpopulation of consumers, (ii) What is the best technology to control undesirable insect pests in urban and agricultural settings? and (iii) Compared to other solutions, like plant-based diets, insect farming is the best method to address rising human global food and nutrient supply demands. Unbiased introduction speakers and teams had approximately 6 months to prepare for their presentations.

Survey of Invasive Mosquito Surveillance and Control Capacity in Southeastern USA Reveals Training and Resource Needs.

Several invasive mosquito species that are nuisances or of medical and veterinary importance have been introduced into the Southeastern region of the USA, posing a threat to other species and the local ecosystems and/or increasing the risk of pathogen transmission to people, livestock, and domestic pets. Prompt and effective monitoring and control of invasive species is essential to prevent them from spreading and causing harmful effects. However, the capacity for invasive mosquito species surveillance is highly variable among mosquito control programs in the Southeast, depending on a combination of factors such as regional geography and climate, access to resources, and the ability to interact with other programs. To facilitate the development of invasive mosquito surveillance in the region, we, the Mosquito BEACONS (Biodiversity Enhancement and Control of Non-native Species) working group, conducted a survey on the capacities of various public health agencies and pest control agencies engaged in mosquito surveillance and control in seven Southeastern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina). Ninety control programs completed the survey, representing an overall response rate of 25.8%. We report key findings from our survey, emphasizing the training and resource needs, and discuss their implications for future invasive mosquito surveillance and control capacity building. By increasing communication and collaboration opportunities (e.g., real-time sharing of collection records, coordinated multistate programs), the establishment of Mosquito BEACONS and the implementation of this survey can accelerate knowledge transfer and improve decision support capacity in response to or in preparation for invasive mosquito surveillance and can establish infrastructure that can be used to inform programs around the world.

Climate, landscape, and life history jointly predict multidecadal community mosquito phenology.

Phenology of adult host-seeking female mosquitoes is a critical component for understanding potential for vector-borne pathogen maintenance and amplification in the natural environment. Despite this importance, long-term multi-species investigations of mosquito phenologies across environments and differing species' life history traits are rare. Here we leverage long-term mosquito control district monitoring data to characterize annual phenologies of 7 host-seeking female mosquito species over a 20-year time period in suburban Illinois, USA. We also assembled data on landscape context, categorized into low and medium development, climate variables including precipitation, temperature and humidity, and key life history traits, i.e. overwintering stage and Spring-Summer versus Summer-mid-Fallseason fliers. We then fit linear mixed models separately for adult onset, peak abundances, and flight termination with landscape, climate and trait variables as predictors with species as a random effect. Model results supported some expectations, including warmer spring temperatures leading to earlier onset, warmer temperatures and lower humidity leading to earlier peak abundances, and warmer and wetter fall conditions leading to later termination. However, we also found sometimes complex interactions and responses contrary to our predictions. For example, temperature had generally weak support on its own, impacting onset and peak abundance timing; rather temperature has interacting effects with humidity or precipitation. We also found higher spring precipitation, especially in low development contexts, generally delayed adult onset, counter to expectations. These results emphasize the need to consider how traits, landscape and climatic factors all interact to determine mosquito phenology, when planning management strategies for vector control and public health protection.

Co-occurrence probabilities between mosquito vectors of West Nile and Eastern equine encephalitis viruses using Markov Random Fields (MRFcov).

Mosquito vectors of eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) and West Nile virus (WNV) in the USA reside within broad multi-species assemblages that vary in spatial and temporal composition, relative abundances and vector competence. These variations impact the risk of pathogen transmission and the operational management of these species by local public health vector control districts. However, most models of mosquito vector dynamics focus on single species and do not account for co-occurrence probabilities between mosquito species pairs across environmental gradients. In this investigation, we use for the first time conditional Markov Random Fields (CRF) to evaluate spatial co-occurrence patterns between host-seeking mosquito vectors of EEEV and WNV around sampling sites in Manatee County, Florida. Specifically, we aimed to: (i) quantify correlations between mosquito vector species and other mosquito species; (ii) quantify correlations between mosquito vectors and landscape and climate variables; and (iii) investigate whether the strength of correlations between species pairs are conditional on landscape or climate variables. We hypothesized that either mosquito species pairs co-occur in patterns driven by the landscape and/or climate variables, or these vector species pairs are unconditionally dependent on each other regardless of the environmental variables. Our results indicated that landscape and bioclimatic covariates did not substantially improve the overall model performance and that the log abundances of the majority of WNV and EEEV vector species were positively dependent on other vector and non-vector mosquito species, unconditionally. Only five individual mosquito vectors were weakly dependent on environmental variables with one exception, Culiseta melanura, the primary vector for EEEV, which showed a strong correlation with woody wetland, precipitation seasonality and average temperature of driest quarter. Our analyses showed that majority of the studied mosquito species' abundance and distribution are insignificantly better predicted by the biotic correlations than by environmental variables. Additionally, these mosquito vector species may be habitat generalists, as indicated by the unconditional correlation matrices between species pairs, which could have confounded our analysis, but also indicated that the approach could be operationalized to leverage species co-occurrences as indicators of vector abundances in unsampled areas, or under scenarios where environmental variables are not informative.

Mosquito Communities Vary across Landscape and Vertical Strata in Indian River County, Florida.

Mosquito and arbovirus surveillance is essential to the protection of public health. A majority of surveys are undertaken at ground level. However, mosquitoes shelter, breed, and quest for hosts across vertical strata, thus limiting our ability to fully describe mosquito and arboviral communities. To elucidate patterns of mosquito vertical stratification, canopy traps were constructed to sample mosquitoes at heights of 1.5, 5.0, and 8.7 m across three different landscape types in a Florida coastal conservation area. We assessed trapping efforts using individual-based rarefaction and extrapolation. The effects of height, landscape, site location, and sampling date on mosquito community composition were parsed out using permutational ANOVA on a Hellinger-transformed Bray-Curtis dissimilarity abundance matrix. Lastly, a generalized linear mixed effects model (GLMM) was used to explore species-specific vertical patterns. We observed differences in sampling effort and community composition structure across various heights and landscapes. Our GLMM revealed significant effects of trap height for Aedes taeniorhynchus, Anopheles crucians, Anopheles quadrimaculatus, and Culex coronator, but not for Culex nigripalpus, the ultra-dominant species present in this area. Together these data provide evidence that height and landscape significantly affect mosquito community structures and highlight a need to develop sampling regimes to target specific vector and nuisance species at their preferred height and across different landscape types.