Bug-Beats: understanding wingbeat frequencies for automated detection of mosquitoes

Deepening our understanding of the mosquito wingbeat is essential for the development of future acoustic mosquito surveillance approaches. Here, a series of measurement arenas together with acoustic methods, were developed and evaluated to explore novel approaches of capturing and describing the wingbeat. The range of measurement arenas designed provided semi-anechoic and reverberant conditions which facilitated the generation of acoustic datasets for free-flight and tethered mosquitoes. The semi-anechoic arena created, facilitated investigations into the acoustic effects of post-emergence age and bloodmeals, which were performed on Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae and Culex quinquefasciatus. The arena developed could produce descriptions of the mosquito wingbeat with exceptional clarity, for tethered or free flight mosquitoes. This facilitated a further investigation using Ae. aegypti to describe the effects of tethering on the mosquito wingbeat. The devices developed also enabled investigation into the acoustic effects of position on a measured wingbeat. A remotely operated positional tool was designed, to alter the angle and distance of a tethered mosquito relative to the measurement microphone, whilst in the sealed semi-anechoic area. Using the tightly controlled acoustic conditions of the arenas generated low noise data that permitted exploration of new acoustic processing approaches. These led to the development of novel metrics to explore mosquito acoustics beyond the wingbeat frequency. The utility of these novel metrics was evaluated alongside the wingbeat frequency for the investigations undertaken in this project. Through this project, a high-quality dataset has been compiled of mosquito wingbeats, which furthered understanding of how to sample, process and interpret them, which may facilitate development of future tools for mosquito surveillance.