Fighting Mosquitos with junked tires

This cleaver mosquito egg trap, simply made from old tires, could help us fight Zika virus.

A simple but effective trap called an ‘ovillanta,’ that uses two parts of used tires to trap mosquitoes, will help scientists around the world, to control Zika virus.

A team of innovators from Canada and Mexico, with Canadian Government funding, have successfully tested an environmentally-friendly and low cost way, to destroy the eggs of the mosquitoes that spreads the Zika virus.

Female mosquitoes lay their eggs on a paper in the ovillanta, and then deposit pheromones in the water to let other mosquitoes know that it’s a safe place. Then twice a week the paper is removed, checked for eggs, then burned or sterilized.

In over a 10 month trial period, the researchers found the trap far more successful than standard bucket traps, and the number of dengue cases dropped drastically.

One of the researchers, Gerardo Ulibarri, explains:

“We decided to use recycled tyres – partly because tyres already represent up to 29 percent of the breeding sites chosen by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, partly because tyres are a universally affordable instrument in low-resource settings, and partly because giving old tyres a new use creates an opportunity to clean up the local environment.”

via sciencealert