Passive surveillance records including nuisance or suspected invasive/non-native mosquitoes in the United Kingdom, 2005-2021

Author
Johnston C.J.
Vaux A.G.C.
Cull B.
Medlock J.M.
Abstract
Alongside active surveillance at ports and land transport sites, the UK Health Security Agency runs a passive mosquito surveillance scheme: The Mosquito Recording Scheme (MRS). The MRS is a citizen-science scheme, it receives and identifies mosquitoes submitted by members of the public, including in response to nuisance biting incidents. The aims of the scheme are to detect unusual or invasive species, provide a log of reportable incidents of nuisance mosquito biting, and gain insight into the seasonality of British mosquito biting. Between 2005 and 2021, 286 submissions of mosquitoes were submitted to the MRS, all of which were native UK species, 23 specifically reported nuisance biting, with 92.7% of submissions from England. In total 16 species were submitted with Culiseta annulata (39%) and Culex pipiens s.l. (26% of submissions) the most common, with records of these species throughout the years. Case studies giving examples of a range of submissions and a flow chart of the workflow when receiving a submission are described. Reasons for the low incidence of submissions compared to comparable schemes in Europe are discussed and recommendations on how to improve the scheme is given.
Year of Publication
2023
Journal
Journal of the European Mosquito Control Association
Volume
41
Issue
1
Number of Pages
35-45,
Date Published
2023/03/22
Type of Article
doi: 10.52004/JEMCA2022.0006
URL
DOI
10.52004/JEMCA2022.0006
Scheme
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