Effect of tire leachate on the invasive mosquito Aedes albopictus and the native congener Aedes triseriatus
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Entomology, Toxicology
- Keywords
- Asian tiger mosquito, competition, invasion biology, pest control, tire leachate, urbanization, West Nile virus, zinc, toxins
- Copyright
- © 2017 Villena et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Effect of tire leachate on the invasive mosquito Aedes albopictus and the native congener Aedes triseriatus. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3065v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3065v1
Abstract
Discarded vehicle tire casings are an important artificial habitat for the developmental stages of numerous vector mosquitoes. Discarded vehicle tires degrade under ultraviolet light and leach numerous soluble metals (e.g., barium, cadmium, zinc) and organic substances (e.g., benzothiazole and its derivatives [BTs], polyaromatic hydrocarbons [PAHs]) that could affect mosquito larvae that inhabit the tire casing. This study examined the relationship between soluble zinc, a common marker of tire leachate, on mosquito densities in tire habitats in the field, and tested the effects of tire leachate on the survival and development of newly hatched Aedes albopictus and Aedes triseriatus larvae in a controlled laboratory dose-response experiment. In the field, zinc concentrations were as high as 7.26 mg/L in a single tire and averaged as high as 2.39 (SE±1.17) mg/L among tires at a single site. A. albopictus (37/42 tires, 81.1%) and A. triseriatus (23/42, 54.8%) were the most widespread mosquito species, co-occurred in over half (22/42, 52.4%) of all tires, and A. triseriatus was only collected without A. albopictus in one tire. A. triseriatus was more strongly negatively associated with zinc concentration than A. albopictus, and another common mosquito, C. pipiens, which was found in 17 tires. In the laboratory experiment, A. albopictus per capita rate of population change (l’) was over 1.0, indicating positive population growth, from 0 to 10,000 mg/L tire leachate, corresponding to 8.9 mg/L zinc concentration, but steeply declined to zero from 50,000 to 100,000 mg/L tire leachate (44.5-89.0 mg/L zinc). In contrast, A. triseriatus l’ declined at the lower concentration of 100 mg/L tire leachate (0.05 mg/L zinc), and was zero at 500, 10,000, 50,000 and 100,000 mg/L tire leachate. These results indicate that tire leachate can have severe negative effects on populations of container utilizing mosquitoes at concentrations commonly found in the field. Superior tolerance to tire leachate of A. albopictus compared to A. triseriatus, and possibly other native mosquito species, may have facilitated the replacement of these native species as A. albopictus has invaded North America and other regions around the world.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.