I am currently testing the attractability of mosquitoes to black and white, with a control of transparent plastic. This could help us determine what clothes to dress in to avoid mosquito bites, and therefore the spread of disease, when going outside.
Materials:
Hypothesis: Mosquitoes will hatch more larvae inside of a white conatiner than a Black container because the white stands out more in a natural environment.
I check these traps every 5 days to see if there are any developments in mosquito larvae count. The last check showed an estimated 100 mosquito larvae in the white container and 80 in the black container, while the controls averaged 30
The final data is displayed below. It was determined that the white trap drew in drastically higher amounts of mosquito larvae than all of the traps, while the black trap received less. This could point to the behavioral antics of mosquitoes and their attraction to different colored containers, meanwhile the transparent traps saw the least amount of larvae, likely due to to the mosquitoes overlooking the objects which blend better with their environment.
About the author: Eric is a student from North Miami, FL. This blog describes a mosquito trapping experiment conducted as part of the NASA STEM Enhancement in the Earth Sciences (SEES) summer high school research internship. His virtual internship is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and the NASA Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC) to extend the TSGC Summer Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) internship for US high school (http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/sees-internship/). Eric shared his experience this summer in this blog post.
