Citizen science provides a reliable and scalable tool to track disease-carrying mosquitoes

摘要: Recent outbreaks of Zika, chikungunya and dengue highlight the importance better understanding spread disease-carrying mosquitoes across multiple spatio-temporal scales. Traditional surveillance tools are limited by jurisdictional boundaries cost constraints. Here we show how a scalable citizen science system can solve this problem combining scientists’ observations with expert validation correcting for sampling effort. Our provides accurate early warning information about Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) invasion in Spain, well beyond that available from traditional methods, vital public health services. It also estimates risk comparable to those methods but more directly related human–mosquito encounters relevant epidemiological modelling enough cover entire country. These results illustrate powerful participation be suggest is positioned revolutionize mosquito-borne disease worldwide.