Over the past 50 years, there has been a marked increase in diseases like dengue fever, chikungunya, and Zika. The World Mosquito Program (WMP) has developed an approach that, instead of attempting to eliminate vector species, introduces Wolbachia into native Aedes aegypti populations through the release of Wolbachia -infected mosquitoes. Using this approach, a randomized controlled study recently demonstrated a 77% reduction in dengue across a treatment area within Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Existing release methods use the ground-based release of mosquito eggs or adults that are labor-intensive, are logistically challenging to scale up, and can be restrictive in areas where staff safety is a concern. To overcome these limitations, we developed a fully automated mosquito dosing release system that released smaller cohorts of mosquitoes over a wide area and integrated it into an uncrewed aerial vehicle. We established the effectiveness of this system using an aerial mark, release, and recapture approach. We then demonstrated that using only the aerial release method, we can establish Wolbachia infection in a naive Ae. aegypti population. In both cases, the use of aerial releases demonstrated comparable outcomes to ground-based releases without the required labor or risk. These two trials demonstrated the feasibility of using an aerial release approach for large-scale mosquito releases.

中文翻译：

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利用无人飞行器对 Wolbachia 感染的埃及伊蚊进行现场部署


在过去的 50 年里，登革热、基孔肯雅热和寨卡病毒等疾病显着增加。世界蚊子计划 （WMP） 开发了一种方法，通过释放感染沃尔巴克氏体的蚊子，将沃尔巴克氏体引入本地埃及伊蚊种群，而不是试图消除媒介物种。使用这种方法，最近的一项随机对照研究表明，印度尼西亚日惹治疗区域的登革热减少了 77%。现有的释放方法使用基于地面的蚊卵或成虫释放，这些蚊卵或成虫是劳动密集型的，在物流上难以扩大规模，并且在担心员工安全的区域可能会受到限制。为了克服这些限制，我们开发了一种全自动蚊子剂量释放系统，该系统可以在大面积上释放较小的蚊子群体，并将其集成到无人驾驶飞行器中。我们使用航空标记、释放和重新捕获方法确定了该系统的有效性。然后，我们证明仅使用空中释放方法，我们可以在幼稚 Ae 中建立沃尔巴克氏体感染。埃及种群。在这两种情况下，使用空中释放都显示出与地面释放相当的结果，而无需所需的劳动力或风险。这两项试验证明了使用空中释放方法进行大规模蚊子释放的可行性。