Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – June 20, 2024 – Dr. Tanja McKay and a group of graduate and undergraduate students at ASU are attempting to mitigate the mosquito problem in Northeast Arkansas, but they need your help.
The Citizen Science Mosquito Survey Project aims to monitor the mosquito population and educate the public in an effort to manage the mosquito problem.
The “Mosquito Team” consists of Dr. Tanja McKay, Dr. Karen Yanowitz, Laura Starkus, Becca Lett, Norman Hunter, James Stone, Berenice Reyes, Ashley Lestina, and Marin Hirata. The team’s goals are to monitor the mosquito population via citizen-led trapping, and to educate citizens about mosquito Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM involves a comprehensive approach that emphasizes prevention, population reduction, and habitat examination.
Jonesboro residents can “volunteer” their yard to be a part of the project by signing up here. The team will come to your house and set up a mosquito trap overnight. The trap will be collected the next morning, mosquitoes will be counted and identified, and the mosquito data will be reported back to the resident as well as Vector.
So far, the team has conducted 8 different trapping sessions, collecting over 1,700 individual mosquitoes. One trap (located in Valley View, of course) trapped over 900 mosquitoes in one night.
The project was funded largely by a check that the City presented to Drs. McKay and Yanowitz for the project. The $50,000 in funds came from the American Rescue Plan Act, and the data collected will be used for submission of a larger grant proposal the researchers plan to submit to federal agencies in the future.