Michelle Evans (1), Nicole Solano (2), and Courtney Murdock (1)
(1) Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia (2) Agnes Scott College
Mosquito life history traits relevant to disease transmission are highly dependent on microclimatic variables, such as temperature. The wide accessibility of remotely sensed temperature data allows for mechanistically driven predictions of mosquito-borne disease, but these models are unable to account for mosquito community dynamics. The amount of impervious surfaces and artificial containers varies across a landscape, and the ability to use these parameters to quantify mosquito community composition and abundance can greatly improve the accuracy of predictive models. In order to understand how mosquito communities change across a heterogeneous landscape, we conducted larval mosquito habitat and adult surveys at rural, suburban, and urban sites across Athens, GA in the summer and fall of 2016. Larval habitat density differed across land use and sampling period, and was driven by precipitation. Aedes albopictus dominated the mosquito community at all land classes, except for one rural site. Surprisingly, the higher Ae. albopictus abundance at urban sites was contrary to results from past experiments focusing on microclimate, suggesting that it is the presence of larval habitat that is driving abundance, and not microclimate. Models focusing solely on microclimate, therefore, may be ignoring the importance of mosquito densities in their disease predictions.