A wire-frame shelter for collecting resting mosquitoes

Collecting resting mosquitoes is important for studies of the bloodfeeding patterns of medically important mosquitoes. We developed a novel resting shelter, called a wire-frame resting shelter, for collecting resting mosquitoes and evaluated its efficacy at sites in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. The shelter is made of a 1 x 2-m section of galvanized metal-wire field fencing rolled into a cylinder and placed inside a heavy-duty black plastic bag. In the field evaluation, the wire-frame shelters were comparable to other artificial resting shelters (trash cans) in the number of Culex (Melanoconion) females collected. While a number of other resting shelter designs are available, the wire-frame shelter has a number of beneficial attributes, including being easily assembled in the field, lightweight, inexpensive, and easily modified.