ASSESSMENT OF OVILLANTA TIRE TRAPS FOR MOSQUITO SURVEILLANCE IN THE MIDWESTERN UNITED STATES

Discarded vehicle tires pose negative environmental hazards as they break down and provide ideal habitats for developing mosquito larvae. Integrative vector management (IVM) uses of multiple surveillance and control methods. This study examines the efficacy of using ovillanta traps, made from used vehicle tires, for IVM. Ovillanta traps and discarded tires were placed at 5 field sites and sampled weekly during the summer mosquito field seasons in both 2023 and 2024 to determine if ovillanta traps can be used in IVM in the midwestern USA. Overall, significantly more mosquitoes were collected from ovillanta traps compared with discarded tires, but differences in preference were seen across the 5 most commonly collected species. Results of this study show that ovillanta traps can be used to monitor mosquito species distributions. This allows for the inclusion of a low-cost method in IVM in the midwestern USA.