Ricerc@Sapienza

Since the early nineties, the invasion of Italy/Europe by the Asian Tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) raised increasing public health concern due to the species aggressive daytime outdoor biting behaviour and to the risk of autochthonous transmission of a large variety of exotic arboviruses (e.g. Chikungunya, CHIKV, Dengue and ZIKA), which in fact repeatedly occurred in Europe in the last years, giving rise to a 250-case CHIKV-outbreak in Emilia Romagna in 2007.

Despite the public health concern, few studies have been conducted so far in Europe on epidemiologically relevant parameters, such as Ae. albopictus fine-scale spatial-temporal distribution, the origin and dynamics of its continental invasion and the susceptibility to insecticides used to reduce the species abundance. This project aims to address these issues based on the strong expertize acquired by the research group since Ae. albopictus colonized Rome in 1997 and from novel preliminary data which we would be unable to fully exploit in the absence of dedicated funds/personnel:

1- DEVELOPMENT OF A NOVEL TOOL TO MONITOR AE. ALBOPICTUS ABUNDANCE BY COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, based on ZANZAMAPP mobile application already developed by the research group and recently included within the Global Mosquito Alert Alliance, a new international initiative in progress under the auspices of United Nation Environment and of European Citizen Science Association.

2- UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGIN AND THE DYNAMICS OF INVASION OF ITALY BY AE. ALBOPICTUS BY PHYLOGEOGRAPHIC STUDIES, through genotyping of thousands of SNPs across the genome of already available Ae. albopictus samples collected across Italy, Albania and Greece.

3- CHARACTERIZING INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE STATUS OF AE. ALBOPICTUS AND CULEX PIPIENS IN ITALY by carrying out WHO-approved bioassays on mosquito females originated from eggs/larvae collected across Italy and reared to the adult stage in Rome and targeting the most currently used pyrethroid compounds in Italy.