NEON has ~10 years of data on mosquito species and the pathogens they carry from sites across the U.S. We have tested 1,135,530 mosquitoes (25,641 pools), across 59 mosquito species for 3 major viral families (Alphavirus, Flavivirus and Orthobunyavirus) since 2013. A total of 131 positive pools were further tested for specific viruses yielding 1 pool with Western equine encephalitis virus, 6 pools with Eastern equine encephalitis virus, 3 pools with California encephalitis virus and 57 pools with West Nile virus. A total of 53 of the 57 West Nile virus positive pools were from Culex tarsalis (see figure 1 below). Of the 64 positive pools without a virus-specific positive, 4 were positive for Alphavirus sp. and 60 were positive for Flavivirus sp.
The number of positive pathogen pools remains too small to engage in meaningful tracking of changes in pathogen prevalence as intended by the Science Design for Vectors and Pathogens. As such, there is a need to re-focus this data product to better align with the needs of the data users.
The purpose of this survey is an information gathering exercise to assist in generating a recommendation to the NSF for a suggested path forward for the mosquito pathogen data product (DP1.10041.001). All suggested strategies have been proposed to be nearly budget-neutral to avoid negative impacts on other NEON data collection efforts.
The Mosquito Technical Working Group has provided initial suggestions and feedback on three potential alternative data collection strategies to optimize the data that is provided to end users. These can be categorized into 3 broad schemes ordered by increasing distance from the original scope of this data product:
- Focus on additional collection of target vectors and West Nile virus testing in a smaller geographic study range with more reliable WNV presence to enhance modeling utility of data
- Move towards a metagenomics approach to mosquito-borne virus testing that explores the mosquito virome rather than PCR testing for individual viruses
- Generate a dataset that will complement disease ecology studies and test bloodfed mosquitoes to understand what hosts they fed upon
Note that mosquito trapping and identification will continue to occur at the same frequency as previously, and archived vials that contain these samples will continue to be housed at the NEON Biorepository. These samples will remain available for use by external researchers even if NEON stops testing a particular vector for a particular pathogen.
This survey will collect feedback on all 3 options as well as generate a ranked preference of the options. Each page of the survey will include details about implementation of one of the options followed by questions designed to capture the pros/cons of that option. The survey consists of 5 pages with a total of 15 questions, and should take about 15-20 minutes to complete. The final page of the survey is the most important in which we ask you to rank the options in order of preference and provide any additional feedback.
