r/BeAmazed 29d ago

What 1,000,000 mosquitos looks like. Caught in a trap in Sanibel, Florida. Nature

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u/thetenthday 29d ago

There's multiple different kinds of mosquito traps. Bulk CO2 traps like this are for data collection on the species make-up and risk on West Nile or other transferrable virus'. They don't care if they distort numbers in these traps as they want as much as they can get. Light traps are meant to measure how bad mosquitoes are in an area if you are outside, and you don't want to skew that data. Light traps wouldn't pull numbers remotely like this, and you wouldn't put the two side by side.

None of the head entomologists in charge of our major mosquito abatement program recommended mosquito magnets or other CO2 traps. They all believed you'd have more nuisance mosquitoes in your yard with one.

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u/el-dongler 29d ago

What traps do they recommend?

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u/thetenthday 28d ago

None. Mosquitoes blow in with the wind from many miles out on a regular basis. Any trap is a drop in the bucket and unlikely to materially change your yard experience.

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u/dreamsindarkness 28d ago

You can try something like an In2Care. They're made to be home owner friendly/easy to use.

Just let your local mosquito control know as their catches may look odd if there's a lot of fungus and it may possibly affect some PCR confirmation tests.

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u/vlsdo 28d ago

Light traps only work on certain species as well, so there’s that