February 10, 2022
Mosquito gravitraps are devices that attract gravid female Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus seeking to lay eggs by creating microenvironments for safe egg-laying.
With differing techniques, global gravitrap manufacturers have innovatively used mosquito behavior to lure and trap mosquitoes or kill them or their larvae.
While studying the global range of commercially available gravitraps in the global market, we found the following TEN interesting aspects about them for you.
- Black gravitraps attract adult female mosquitoes, which seek dark places for egg-laying.
- Some gravitraps use oviposition cues they generate through hay or yeast-infused water (which one manufacturer calls ‘stinky water’).
- Some gravitraps use glueboards to trap female adult mosquitoes to control their population.
- Larvae secreted pheromones in gravitrap water attract female adult mosquitoes.
- Some gravitraps use mosquito larvae’s negative phototactic response to repel and kill them by asphyxiation.
- It would help freeze live adult mosquitoes you caught in a trap to inactivate them before examining them.
- Predators like ants like mosquito gravitraps for live adult mosquitoes in those devices that the ants use as prey!
- Gravitraps use Aedes aegypti behavior of laying eggs in multiple containers.
- Some gravitraps use pesticides or fungal biological control agents to kill mosquitoes.
- Cannibalism by mosquito larvae transmits pesticides from dead pupae to the larvae feeding on such pupae in gravitraps.