Abuzz
ABSTRACT
The direct monitoring of mosquito populations in field settings is a crucial input for shaping appropriate and timely control measures for mosquito-borne diseases. Here, we demonstrate that commercially available mobile phones are a powerful tool for acoustically mapping mosquito species distributions worldwide. We show that even low-cost mobile phones with very basic functionality are capable of sensitively acquiring acoustic data on species-specific mosquito wingbeat sounds, while simultaneously recording the time and location of the human-mosquito encounter. We survey a wide range of medically important mosquito species, to quantitatively demonstrate how acoustic recordings supported by spatio-temporal metadata enable rapid, non-invasive species identification. As proof-of-concept, we carry out field demonstrations where minimally-trained users map local mosquitoes using their personal phones. Thus, we establish a new paradigm for mosquito surveillance that takes advantage of the existing global mobile network infrastructure, to enable continuous and large-scale data acquisition in resource-constrained areas.
BIG QUESTION:
“Can we leverage other existing simple and abundant technologies for mosquito surveillance that can empower anyone to participate in the effort?”
The Problem
World-wide over 3 billion people are at risk of contracting mosquito-borne infectious diseases, such as malaria, dengue, and Zika. These diseases have erupted into a public health crisis rapidly spreading across continents with devastating consequences: the neurological development defects manifesting in newborns infected with Zika are a very recent example of this. Since many mosquito-borne infections lack vaccines or drugs, the most viable method to contain their spread is to prevent their transmission by mosquitoes.
Therefore, it is imperative to accurately and sensitively monitor the complex transmission dynamics involving mosquitoes and humans. The scale of such an effort can be overwhelming, as there are more than 200 million insects for every single person on our planet. Furthermore, there are more than 30 different disease-carrying mosquito species, each with varying geographical distributions, migration trends, and biting patterns. Surveying these vast and diverse populations poses the tremendous challenge of tracking billions of mosquitoes to get a statistically accurate picture of their interaction with humans. Hidden in this data are also threats of new diseases hiding under the radar of our current limited knowledge.
CREDIT: Video by Kurt Hickman; Music by Leanne Kelly.
What is Abuzz?
We propose a solution using regular mobile phones worldwide, for crowdsourcing the acoustic surveillance of mosquitoes by the affected public itself. This is a zero-cost solution that leverages the sophisticated audio data handling capabilities of modern mobile phones and the ubiquitous mobile network infrastructure to yield mosquito data on a global scale at unprecedented spatio-temporal resolutions.
For decades, scientists have known that we can identify species of mosquito by the pitch of sound they make (from wingbeats) when they fly. Abuzz enables commercially-available mobile phones to serve as tools that can acoustically map mosquito species distributions worldwide using the phones’ built-in microphones. The power of Abuzz comes with a big data. Acoustic recordings supported by spatio-temporal metadata enable rapid, non-invasive species identification. This new paradigm for mosquito surveillance takes advantage of the existing global mobile network infrastructure, to enable continuous and large-scale data acquisition in resource-constrained areas.
