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Student Poster Display

Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology

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Student Regular Poster: MUVE

D3240: Capturing mosquitoes with electric fields using insulated conductor wires

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, Exhibit Hall 6, PCC
Poster Display

To control and prevent mosquito-borne diseases, insecticides are often our only option. They have been very effective but excessive use has led to the rapid development and spread of insecticide resistance. Health experts have called for solutions, leading to intensified efforts to find new approaches to reduce contact between mosquito populations and humans.


A new tool in development is the use of standard house electrical wires with high-power electrical fields (EFs) to repel mosquitoes by creating an invisible mosquito barrier. We found that in addition to repelling mosquitoes, EFs can also be used to capture mosquitoes. Our aim is to a) use this phenomenon to further reduce human-mosquito contact through EFs, and b) assess if this approach can be used in trapping technologies in the field to assist mosquito surveillance and control programs. We quantify the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that are successfully captured by the EFs, using household electrical wires. Mosquitoes fly through a wind tunnel, in the direction of a lure (dry ice). They have to pass through an EF window, with a single row of vertically placed house electrical wires with alternating polarity and placed 1.5 cm apart. EF strengths range from 0 kV/cm (control) to 8kV/cm. Preliminary data showed that mosquitoes are captured (i.e. get stuck to the negative wires) at EF strengths of 4kV/cm and higher. Our work demonstrates that standard electrical wires can be used to capture host-seeking mosquitoes, which allows us to expand our current mosquito surveillance and control toolbox.