Hans-Peter Führer, Ellen Schöner, Carina Zittra

Mosquitoes are vectors of disease agents such as arboviruses. Systematic, continuous mosquito surveillance is considered the most reliable tool to predict for example WNV-transmission risk in humans. Despite this, knowledge about mosquito species inventory, distribution and ecology in Austria and worldwide is lacking and often hindered by lack of public funding. Until now, 46 mosquito species have been reported in Austria and a previous study collected more than 30.000 mosquitoes at more than 60 sites in Eastern Austria. The most commonly collected mosquitoes in this study were of the Culex pipiens complex, which are native to Austria but non-the-less effective vectors of WNV. Only three alien species were present, the Japenese bush mosquito (Ochlerotatus japonicus japonicus) as well as Culiseta longiareolata and Anopheles hyrcanus. The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, known as an important disease vector in many tropical countries, was not detected, but it is likely that it will establish in the future due to introduction by intensive traffic and trade and warming temperatures due to climate change. Since the impact of climate change is difficult to predict, understanding the current distribution and possible future expansion of invasive and native mosquito species is essential to guide coherent policies in vector control. Recent experience has shown the interest of the general public in mosquito and vector related studies as well as their control and prevention strategies, and citizen support for mosquito surveillance in countries like Germany has been proven successful. Therefore, we propose a citizen science project in the city of Vienna in conjunction with the Zentralverband der Kleingärtner (small garden plot organization) to sensitize the general population to the issues of vector identification, surveillance and control. For this project, mosquitoes will be collected by volunteers in simple, self- constructed traps and submitted to the mosquito vector research group of the Institute of Parasitology of the Vetmeduni Vienna, where they will be identified and results are collected. To control for the effectiveness of this method and to be able to compare results with previous survey studies, the scientists of the vector research group will also collect mosquitoes in standard commercial BG Sentinel traps at the sites of the participating small garden plots. The participating volunteers will be educated by the scientists in regards of mosquito identification, ecology, surveillance and prevention and will receive feedback on collected species and particularities of the submitted samples. In addition, this project and the participants will be supervised and evaluated by an Ecological Psychologist. We hope that this project will demonstrate the usefulness of “Citizen Science” for mosquito vector surveillance in the future.