The National Veterinary Institute, SVA, is currently receiving hundreds of envelopes containing mosquitoes from private individuals across Sweden. The mosquitoes are collected as part of the citizen science project Myggkartan to map the risk of mosquito-borne diseases.
The envelopes are sent in by participants in the Myggkartan project. Each mosquito is identified by species by researchers at SVA and registered in Artportalen, the national species database.
Anders Lindström, senior researcher at SVA, explains that the focus is on mosquitoes near humans. "These are mosquitoes that are close to people. We are interested in which mosquitoes bite people – those are the ones that can become infected and spread further," he says.
The method is simple: a mosquito is caught, placed in a matchbox or similar, put in an envelope marked with place and date, and sent to SVA. Each sample contributes to the map of Sweden's mosquitoes.
