Abstract: Collecting information from field caught mosquitoes, including species identification, age, and infection status is laborious, fraught with the potential for errors, and often beyond the capacity of many mosquito control districts. With the support of the AMCA Research Fund, we report here on progress made using mid-infrared spectroscopy to accurately identify to species, age, and determine infection status of mosquitoes in the laboratory. We have completed experiments with ageing across four species of vector mosquitoes and examining infection in three pathogen-mosquito systems (two viruses and a filarial worm). Our results suggest the promise of, one day, having a “mosquito tricorder” that could scan trap contents and determine species, age, and infectious status of mosquitoes in seconds.
