On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 03:23:24PM -0800, Victoria Quinton wrote:
> Also do the mosquitoes which carry Dengue Fever have
> any natural predators, of the native fauna variety?
Courtesy a half-remembered ABC Radio interview and some lunchtime
googling:
The most important vector in Australian is Aedes aegypti which breeds
almost entirely in artificial sites around human habitation. There are
concern an unwanted side-effect of the water tanks becoming again popular
may be the return of A. aegypti to Brisbane and perhaps further south.
Their habitat must limit exposure to predators - in my urban locale
vertebrate insectivores have been hammered. Superb Fairy-Wrens and Willy
Wagtails are the only specialist avian insectivores left at anything
like significant density. I suspect the story is similar for microbats.
I don't know if vertebrate predation is importants A. aegypti - apparently
its diurnal which might expose it to birds.
A Queensland researcher has done impressive work on invert. predation -
He and colleagues have shown dengue can be controlled by by inocculating
A. aegypti breeding sites, like wells, with a copepod species which
preys on mosquito larvae.
Andrew
http://medent.usyd.edu.au/fact/dengue.htm
http://www.smartstate.qld.gov.au/resources/publications/catalyst/2005/issue_14/story10.shtm
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