Thesis subject

How to catch a mosquito? Designing and testing odour-baited traps.

You hate mosquitoes? You like to design things and to do experiments? Then you probably will like this project!

Mosquitoes are the most dangerous animal in the world because they are vectors of dangerous diseases like malaria (WHO, 2015). One novel vector control strategy that is potentially very successful is massive mosquito trapping using odour-baited traps (Homan et al., 2016). Odour-baited traps create a circulatory airflow that dissipates attractive odours to attract mosquitoes; when approaching the trap, the mosquitoes are then sucked into the trap and killed (More about our work on these traps here).

These traps are already very good at attracting mosquitoes but their capture performances are still relatively poor (Cribellier et al., 2018). Your goal will be to build and test prototypes of mosquito traps based on our current understanding of mosquito flight behaviour and with the goal of developing highly efficient traps (Figure 1).

Optional: If you are more interested in unravelling what makes a trap better than another, you may use multiple infrared cameras to record the 3d flight paths of mosquitoes when being captured (or not). By combining this data with airflow measurements, you may find a way to trick mosquitoes into the trap every time they approach it.

Figure 1: Steps toward the development of a new odour baited traps, the M-Tego. The steps consist of a) design ideas, b) prototyping, c) testing, d) building of a new trap, e) iteratively improving ease of use and durability, and finally manufacturing and distributing of the final product. Figure from Cribellier et al., 2021.
Figure 1: Steps toward the development of a new odour baited traps, the M-Tego. The steps consist of a) design ideas, b) prototyping, c) testing, d) building of a new trap, e) iteratively improving ease of use and durability, and finally manufacturing and distributing of the final product. Figure from Cribellier et al., 2021.

This study is part of a collaborative project between the Experimental Zoology Group and the Laboratory of Entomology.

Skills you will be using/learning are:

  • Do-it-yourself approach for object design
  • Basic knowledge on experimental design
  • Knowledge in statistics is preferred
  • Optional: An interest in programming for the analysis of 3d data

Are you interested? Please contact via ezo.thesis@wur.nl