Collection and Processing of Adult Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) for Molecular Studies of Arbovirus Infection

The processing of adult mosquitoes collected in the field for studies of natural infection with arboviruses of public health interest (genera: Flavivirus, Alphavirus, Orthobunyavirus) follows the assembly of homogenized mosquito pools and extraction of genetic material using commercial or manual techniques, and the detection of viral RNA by polymerase chain reaction (nested RT-PCR) [11]. This paper describes the procedures for capturing, taxonomic determination, obtaining genetic material, and molecular techniques for detecting alphaviruses.