Complete Inhibition of Vertical Mosquito Landing through Topographical Surface Design

Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, and malaria have long been a health and economic burden in our society. Such illnesses develop after the pathogen, here arboviruses, are transmitted to humans by female mosquitoes during blood meals. In the case of dengue and chikungunya, such pathogens are transmitted to humans by infected Aedes aegypti females. Prior to feeding the insects rest on vertical surfaces. In this work, a surface roughness threshold was observed for live Aedes aegypti colonies, and below a root-mean-squared roughness of S_q < 0.124 μm the mosquitoes were physically incapable of gripping vertical substrates. This roughness threshold was unaffected by surface wettability or relative humidity. The importance of topographical feature height was understood using a claw-hooking model considering friction. Local defects above this threshold allowed claw hooking to take place, emphasizing the importance of surface uniformity. An antimosquito coating was developed that reduced surface roughness below this threshold when it was applied to realistic surfaces such as wood, brick, wall laminates, and tile. Lowering the surface roughness below the threshold reduced the number of mosquitoes capable of landing on the surfaces by 100%: i.e., no mosquitoes were able to adhere to the treated surfaces. The ability to completely inhibit Aedes aegypti females from landing on surfaces represents a new vector-borne disease control strategy that does not suffer from the nontarget toxicity, resistance, or ecosystem disruption associated with conventional chemical control strategies.