ECU professor conducts research on mosquito insecticide resistance
Dr. Stephanie Richards, a professor in the East Carolina University College of Health and Human Performance, is researching insecticide resistance among various species of mosquitoes as part of a $30,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Division of Public Health.
At her lab inside the Belk Building, female mosquitoes are placed in glass bottles containing various amounts of residue from active ingredients in mosquito insecticides. At five-minute intervals, student researchers check the status of the mosquitoes for up to two hours. Some fly normally, others flutter upside down and still others crawl lazily against the glass, an indication of the effectiveness of insecticides health departments, other agencies and commercial companies use to kill mosquitoes.
Richards works with a number of counties throughout the state on mosquito control. Agencies send her mosquito eggs that are grown to adulthood in her lab. The process takes about a week. Those adults are then subjected to various active ingredients in insecticides. Data is collected and passed on to public health officials so they can make decisions on effective mosquito control methods.
“We’ve been doing this kind of work for four or five years now,” Richards said. “It’s been a good collaboration, and the health departments appreciate it because they get some feedback and some advice.”
Beyond just a pesky, itchy bump, mosquitoes can transmit the West Nile, dengue and Zika viruses as well as Eastern equine encephalitis and La Crosse encephalitis through their bites. Richards said there are about 60 species of mosquitoes in North Carolina. Surveillance is key, she said, to determine the types of mosquitoes that may be prevalent in any one area so officials can determine a control plan to protect public health.
She said mosquito control starts at home, and she advises residents to dump containers that can collect water where mosquitoes lay eggs and develop.
“Mosquitoes can lay their eggs in a little teaspoon of water. That’s all it takes,” she said. “People who have buckets and tarps and all kinds of things in their backyards that collect water, that can be an issue that they can fix themselves, so education is also important for mosquito control.”
Richards’ interest in public health crossed paths with mosquitoes when she interned in the vector program at the Craven County Health Department as she worked on her master’s in environmental health at ECU in the early 2000s. Now as a professor and researcher at ECU, she passes that passion for public health to her students through one of the smallest pests around — the mosquito.
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Contact: Dr. Stephanie Richards, richardss@ecu.edu, or Ken Buday, ECU News Services, budayk19@ecu.edu
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