Influence of Rainfall on Mosquito Abundance

Abstract

Some species of mosquitoes, known as container-inhabiting mosquitoes, breed in temporary pools of water typically filled after rainstorms. Some examples of this are tires, trash, and anything that can collect water from a rain event. This study seeks to further understand container-inhabiting mosquito abundance and the connection to rainfall. Mosquitoes were collected at 14 sites in Richmond County, GA on a biweekly basis between January to December 2016. These sites were surveyed using two types of traps, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Light trap and a CDC gravid trap. In addition to rainfall, the 7-14 day incubation period of the mosquito life cycle was considered to assess antecedent rainfall window for the correlation analysis. For the previous 7-14 day total precipitation, we found good correlation for one known container-inhabiting species and poor correlation for two other known species. Culex quinquefasciatus, had the best correlation (R2 = 0.71) while the other two species, Aedes albopictus (R2= -0.005) and Culex salinarius (R2= 0.024) had weak correlations. We conclude that differences between correlations were likely due to the reliance of breeding within containers for C. quinquefasciatus than for the other two species, which have more diverse breeding habitat preferences.