Purpose:
The purpose of this experiment is to determine the type of bait and the container size that attracts the greatest number of mosquitos. I hoped to understand whether the amount of water and the bait in the water made a difference in the oviposition of female mosquitos.
Setup:
I used 6 different buckets of 3 different sizes and filled them with two types of bait- initially sugar water and water with grass. I made sure to fill up the buckets of three different sizes almost all the way with the largest bucket containing 5 quarts, the second largest bucket containing 2 quarts, and the smallest bucket containing 1 quart of water.
Hypothesis:
Initially, I hypothesized that the largest buckets of water would contain the greatest number of mosquitos as I inferred that the greater sources of water would provide the mosquitos with similar conditions to large bodies of water and would be attractive since there would be little to no flow movement in the bucket. In addition, since Anopheles mosquitos like to lay their eggs in the water and Culex mosquitos like to lay their eggs on the surface of the water, I thought the larger buckets of water would be more appealing to 2/3 of the most relevant types of mosquitos.
In addition, my hypothesis was that the sugar water bait would be more appealing to mosquitos rather than the grass water bait. I believed so as sugar water contains the sugar and its components that both male and female mosquitos need for energy. New research has even identified a possible connection between mosquito attraction to human hosts for blood being reduced after feeding on greater amounts of sugar than they typically consume when they feed from plants.
Data:
Week 1 Data
Large bucket of water, grass bait: 5 larvae
Large bucket of water, sugar water bait: 0 larvae
Medium bucket of water, grass bait: 3 larvae
Medium bucket of water, sugar water bait: 0 larvae
Small bucket of water, grass bait: 2 larvae
Small bucket of water, sugar water bait: 0 larvae
Week 2 Data was influenced by a storm which overflowed the buckets and destroyed data
Week 3 Data
Large bucket of water, grass bait: 7 larvae
Medium bucket of water, grass bait: 4 larvae
Small bucket of water, grass bait: 5 larvae
The next few weeks of data continued to follow the existing trend of both Week 1 and Week 3 data collected above. My hypothesis was supported regarding the size of the container that attracted the greatest number of mosquitoes, however, the bait that was more successful was by far the grassy water bait as the sugar water attracted other animals like ants and spiders. Mosquitoes generally did not lay their eggs on the surface of the water, in the water, or on the container/stick above the surface of the water either- leading to little to no larvae being recorded in the sugar water each week- contradicting my original hypothesis.
Drawing Conclusions:
One of the most difficult issues arose in Week 2 when a storm occurred in my city and overfilled all my buckets- which I had placed out in an open, shaded area and not in the shade of a covered area. The data that I had been collecting was lost, and the setback made me feel a little anxious but I was able to restart the project and collect data again. I was not surprised that the largest bucket contained the greatest amount of larvae but the fact that the sugar water did not attract the greatest number of mosquitoes definitely surprised me. In the bucket each week I would notice a multitude of other insects like ants, spiders, a few beetles, and once, I even noted a frog attempting to hop into the largest sugar bucket. However, one particularly interesting observation was the little to no mosquito larvae I recorded in the sugar water buckets. Another difficult aspect of my research had to do with the record heat occurring in Texas. The 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures often required me to check in on the amount of water in the buckets as it tended to evaporate.
About the author: Diya D. is a rising senior at Round Rock High School, Round Rock, TX. 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. Her 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/).Diya shares her experience in this blog post.
