Tarrant County Public Health Department Fort Worth, Texas, United States
Abstract: A mosquito’s ability to become resistant to adulticides used by mosquito control operations is a major issue, worldwide. Many mosquito control operations perform adulticiding activities, but lack access, personnel, and resources to perform basic testing for resistance to pesticides within their local mosquito populations. This presentation will review a plan to set up mosquito resistance testing in three phases. Phase I, collecting and maintaining wild-type local mosquitoes for testing utilizing CDC bottle bioassays, Phase II, establishing and maintaining a susceptible lab colony, and Phase III, field testing of susceptible and wild-type mosquitoes. Phase I of set-up has been completed. Materials needed for set-up, funding sources, initial personnel training, and location acquisition will be discussed, as will unexpected training hardships including basic colony maintenance, how seasonality of egg collection may affect larval viability, correctly transferring mosquitoes from a breeder to a cage, and other ideas to think about while performing CDC bottle bioassays.
