Fauna and Larval Habitat Characteristics of Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) in Kashan County, Central Iran, 2019

Tahereh Sadat Asgarian; Seyed Hassan  Moosa-Kazemi; Mohammad Mehdi Sedaghat; Rouhullah Dehghani; Mohammad Reza  Yaghoobi-Ershadi

doi:10.18502/jad.v15i1.6487

Tahereh Sadat Asgarian Department of Medical Entomology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Seyed Hassan Moosa-Kazemi Department of Medical Entomology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Mohammad Mehdi Sedaghat Department of Medical Entomology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Rouhullah Dehghani Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Department of Environment Health, School of Public Health, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran
Mohammad Reza Yaghoobi-Ershadi Department of Medical Entomology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/jad.v15i1.6487

Keywords: Mosquito; Larvae; Surveillance

Abstract

Background: Mosquitoes are responsible for spreading devastating parasites and pathogens causing some important infectious diseases. The present study was done to better understand and update the fauna of Culicidae and to find out the distribution and the type of their larval habitats in Kashan County.

Methods: This study was done in four districts of Kashan County (Central, Qamasr, Niasar and Barzok). Mosquito lar-vae were collected from 23 active larval habitats using a standard 350ml capacity mosquito dipper from April to late December 2019. The collected larvae were transferred to containers containing lactophenol, and after two weeks indi-vidually mounted in Berlese's fluid on a microscope slide and identified to species by morphological characters and valid keys.

Results: In this study, a total of 9789 larvae were collected from urban and rural areas in Kashan County. The identified genera were Anopheles, Culiseta and Culex. In this study larvae of An. turkhudi, Cx. perexiguus, Cx. mimeticus, Cx. deserticola and Cs. subochrea were collected for the first time from Kashan County.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicate the presence and activity of different mosquito species in Kashan County that some of them are vectors of arbovirus and other vector-borne diseases.