RT Journal Article
T1 Citizen science provides a reliable and scalable tool to track disease-carrying mosquitoes
A1 Palmer, John R. B.
A1 Oltra, Aitana
A1 Collantes, Francisco
A1 Delgado, Juan Antonio
A1 Lucientes, Javier
A1 Delacour, Sarah
A1 Bengoa, Mikel
A1 Eritja, Roger
A1 Bartumeus, Frederick
AB Recent outbreaks of Zika, chikungunya and dengue highlight the importance of better understanding the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes across multiple spatio-temporal scales. Traditional surveillance tools are limited by jurisdictional boundaries and cost constraints. Here we show how a scalable citizen science system can solve this problem by combining citizen scientists’ observations with expert validation and correcting for sampling effort. Our system provides accurate early warning information about the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) invasion in Spain, well beyond that available from traditional methods, and vital for public health services. It also provides estimates of tiger mosquito risk comparable to those from traditional methods but more directly related to the human–mosquito encounters that are relevant for epidemiological modelling and scalable enough to cover the entire country. These results illustrate how powerful public participation in science can be and suggest citizen science is positioned to revolutionize mosquito-borne disease surveillance worldwide.
PB Springer Nature
SN ESSN: 2041-1723
YR 2017
FD 2017
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/18387
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/18387
LA eng
NO Unión Europea. H2020
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España)
NO Fundación Bancaria La Caixa
NO Fundación Española de Ciencia y Tecnología
DS Docta Complutense
RD 11 abr 2025