Gray Lyndsey, Asay Bryce C, Hephaestus Blue, McCabe Ruth, Pugh Greg, Markle Erin D, Churcher Thomas S, Foy Brian D
Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Viden Technologies LLC, Laramie, Wyoming.
Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2022 Jul 18;107(3):689-700. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.21-1173.
Vector biologists have long sought the ability to accurately quantify the age of wild mosquito populations, a metric used to measure vector control efficiency. This has proven difficult due to the difficulties of working in the field and the biological complexities of wild mosquitoes. Ideal age grading techniques must overcome both challenges while also providing epidemiologically relevant age measurements. Given these requirements, the Detinova parity technique, which estimates age from the mosquito ovary and tracheole skein morphology, has been most often used for mosquito age grading despite significant limitations, including being based solely on the physiology of ovarian development. Here, we have developed a modernized version of the original mosquito aging method that evaluated wing wear, expanding it to estimate mosquito chronological age from wing scale loss. We conducted laboratory experiments using adult Anopheles gambiae held in insectary cages or mesocosms, the latter of which also featured ivermectin bloodmeal treatments to change the population age structure. Mosquitoes were age graded by parity assessments and both human- and computational-based wing evaluations. Although the Detinova technique was not able to detect differences in age population structure between treated and control mesocosms, significant differences were apparent using the wing scale technique. Analysis of wing images using averaged left- and right-wing pixel intensity scores predicted mosquito age at high accuracy (overall test accuracy: 83.4%, average training accuracy: 89.7%). This suggests that this technique could be an accurate and practical tool for mosquito age grading though further evaluation in wild mosquito populations is required.
长期以来，媒介生物学家一直寻求能够准确量化野生蚊子种群年龄的方法，这是一种用于衡量媒介控制效率的指标。由于在野外工作的困难以及野生蚊子的生物学复杂性，事实证明这很困难。理想的年龄分级技术必须克服这两个挑战，同时还要提供与流行病学相关的年龄测量。鉴于这些要求，尽管存在重大局限性，包括仅基于卵巢发育的生理学，但从蚊子卵巢和气管丝形态估计年龄的Detinova parity技术最常用于蚊子年龄分级。在这里，我们开发了一种原始蚊子老化方法的现代化版本，该方法评估翅膀磨损情况，并将其扩展为通过翅膀鳞片损失来估计蚊子的实际年龄。我们使用饲养在昆虫饲养笼或中宇宙中的成年冈比亚按蚊进行了实验室实验，后者还采用了伊维菌素血餐处理来改变种群年龄结构。通过 parity评估以及基于人工和计算的翅膀评估对蚊子进行年龄分级。尽管Detinova技术无法检测到处理过的和对照中宇宙之间年龄种群结构的差异，但使用翅膀鳞片技术时差异明显。使用平均左右翼像素强度分数对翅膀图像进行分析，可以高精度地预测蚊子的年龄（总体测试准确率：83.4%，平均训练准确率：89.7%）。这表明该技术可能是一种准确且实用的蚊子年龄分级工具，不过还需要在野生蚊子种群中进行进一步评估。
