Search for: All records

Mosquitoes carry several diseases that pose an emerging threat to society. Outbreaks of these diseases are often sudden and can spread to previously unaffected areas. For example, the Zika virus was discovered in 1947, but only received international attention when it spread to the Americas in 2014, where it caused over 100,000 cases in Brazil alone. While we now recognize the threat Zika can pose for public health, our knowledge about the ecology of the disease remains poor. Nine species of mosquitoes are known to be able to carry the Zika virus, but it cannot be ruled out that other mosquitoes may also be able to spread the disease. There are hundreds of species of mosquitoes, and testing all of them is difficult and costly. So far, only a small number of species have been tested to see if they transmit Zika. However, computational tools called decision trees could help by predicting which mosquitoes can transmit a virus based on common traits, such as a mosquito's geographic range, or the symptoms of a virus. Evans et al. used decision trees to create a model that predicts which species of mosquitoes are potential carriers of Zika virus and should therefore be prioritized for testing. The model took into account all known viruses that belong to the same family as Zika virus and the mosquitoes that carry them. Evans et al. predict that 35 species may be able to carry the Zika virus, seven of which are found in the United States. Two of these mosquito species are known to transmit West Nile Virus and are therefore prime examples of species that should be prioritized for testing. Together, the ranges of the seven American species encompass the whole United States, suggesting Zika virus could affect a much larger area than previously anticipated. The next step following on from this work will be to carry out experiments to test if the 35 mosquitoes identified by the model are actually able to transmit the Zika virus.