Silva Manuel, Gouveia Bruna R, Santos José Maurício, Guerreiro Nélia, Monteiro Alexandra, Almeida Soraia, Osório Hugo Costa
National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA), Centre for Vectors and Infectious Diseases Research (CEVDI), Avenida da Liberdade n.-5, 2965-575 Águas de Moura, Portugal.
Direção Regional da Saúde, Rua 31 de Janeiro, n°. 54 e 55, 9054-511 Funchal, Portugal.
Biology (Basel). 2025 Aug 14;14(8):1047. doi: 10.3390/biology14081047.
Mosquitoes from the (.) genus are vectors of dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and other arboviruses, posing a significant public health threat. In 2005, was detected for the first time in Madeira Island, Portugal, in the city of Funchal, and has since become established in the region. In 2017, was detected for the first time in mainland Portugal. These invasion events require targeted entomological surveillance, which demands substantial human resources and a high management capacity for traditional vector monitoring. Following promising results obtained in laboratory conditions, a field-deployable model of a bioacoustic sensor for the automatic classification of mosquitoes integrated with a Biogents Sentinel trap as part of the VECTRACK system was tested in three regions in Portugal.
The VECTRACK system was deployed in three locations: Funchal on Madeira Island, and Palmela and Algarve on mainland Portugal. Catch bags were manually inspected at intervals ranging from daily to weekly, resulting in a total of 38 captures in Madeira, 10 in Palmela, and 7 in the Algarve. Manual identifications were compared with those generated by the VECTRACK system, and the degree of correlation between the two datasets was assessed using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.
A total of 176 mosquitoes were captured in Madeira, 732 in Palmela, and 143 in the Algarve. Both manual and sensor-based identifications demonstrated similar performance, with high correlation observed between the two methods. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients indicated high agreement for both female and male mosquitoes across all sites: Madeira: females = 0.84, males = 0.92, Palmela: females = 0.99, males = 0.84, Algarve: females = 0.98, and males = 0.99, all with -values < 0.001.
The VECTRACK system demonstrated strong performance in accurately distinguishing mosquitoes from non-mosquitoes, differentiating between and genera, and identifying the sex of individual specimens. These promising results provide a solid foundation for the development of automated early warning systems and enhance mosquito surveillance strategies, which are critical for timely responses to potential vector-borne disease outbreaks.
（.）属的蚊子是登革热、寨卡病毒、基孔肯雅热和其他虫媒病毒的传播媒介，对公众健康构成重大威胁。2005年，在葡萄牙马德拉岛丰沙尔市首次检测到（.），此后该物种在该地区定殖。2017年，在葡萄牙大陆首次检测到（.）。这些入侵事件需要有针对性的昆虫学监测，而传统病媒监测需要大量人力资源和较高的管理能力。在实验室条件下取得了有前景的结果之后，一种可在野外部署的生物声学传感器模型在葡萄牙的三个地区进行了测试，该模型用于自动分类蚊子，并与作为VECTRACK系统一部分的Biogents Sentinel诱捕器集成。
VECTRACK系统部署在三个地点：马德拉岛的丰沙尔以及葡萄牙大陆的帕尔梅拉和阿尔加维。每隔一天至一周对手动检查捕获袋，在马德拉共捕获38只，在帕尔梅拉捕获10只，在阿尔加维捕获7只。将人工鉴定结果与VECTRACK系统生成的结果进行比较，并使用斯皮尔曼等级相关系数评估两个数据集之间的相关程度。
在马德拉共捕获176只蚊子，在帕尔梅拉捕获732只，在阿尔加维捕获143只。人工鉴定和基于传感器的鉴定均表现出相似的性能，两种方法之间观察到高度相关性。斯皮尔曼等级相关系数表明，在所有地点，雌性和雄性蚊子的鉴定结果高度一致：马德拉：雌性=0.84，雄性=0.92；帕尔梅拉：雌性=0.99，雄性=0.84；阿尔加维：雌性=0.98，雄性=0.99，所有p值均<0.001。
VECTRACK系统在准确区分蚊子与非蚊子、区分（.）属和（.）属以及识别单个标本的性别方面表现出色。这些有前景的结果为开发自动化预警系统和加强蚊子监测策略奠定了坚实基础，而这对于及时应对潜在的病媒传播疾病爆发至关重要。
