Abstract
In Europe, mosquito-related public health concerns are growing due to the increasing spread of invasive mosquito species and the recent emergence of mosquito-borne arboviruses. A vital backbone in the assessment of these issues is detailed knowledge of the mosquito fauna, i.e. regional mosquito inventories. It was therefore decided to intensify nationwide investigations on the occurrence and distribution of mosquitoes in Germany in order to update old records and to detect possible faunal changes. This paper is focussing on a densely populated metropolitan region, the federal state of Hamburg and its adjacent environs, taking two historical baseline inventories into consideration, spanning almost 100 years of mosquito research in Hamburg. In the period between 2010 and 2014, more than 10,000 juvenile, neonate and adult mosquito specimens were sampled and trapped at 105 sites in Hamburg and its environs, of which about 60 % have been identified to species level, resulting in a total of 33 recorded species. Of these, Anopheles algeriensis, Culex modestus, Ochlerotatus caspius, Ochlerotatus nigrinus and Ochlerotatus sticticus are new to the area. The most common species in Hamburg are Culex pipiens/torrentium and Ochlerotatus annulipes/cantans. In contrast, two previously common species, Anopheles atroparvus and Ochlerotatus excrucians, were not detected. Despite substantial environmental changes due to reconstruction, urbanisation and renaturation in the Hamburg metropolitan region in recent decades, there has been remarkably little change within the mosquito fauna during the last century.
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Acknowledgments
The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Office for Urban Development and Environment, the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein, Office for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Areas, the district administrators of Stormarn/Bad Oldesloe, Segeberg, Herzogtum Lauenburg and the City of Geesthacht approved the collection of mosquito samples in various nature reserves. We also thank the management of the Hamburg-Ohlsdorf cemetery for permissions to carry out mosquito collections. We are grateful to Rainer Schlage, Jacob Rosenthal, Thomas Kruppa, Anita Plenge-Bönig and Bernd Noack for mosquito field collections. Thanks go to Martin Rudolf, Christina Czajka, Stefanie Becker, Heidrun von Thien and Klaus Jürries for logistic and technical assistance. This work was financially supported by the Leibniz Association, grant number SAW-2011-BNI-3, and the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) through the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), grant number FKZ371148404. This article is partially based on a master thesis by JB in the Faculty of Biology, University of Hamburg.
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Krüger, A., Börstler, J., Badusche, M. et al. Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) of metropolitan Hamburg, Germany. Parasitol Res 113, 2907–2914 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-014-3952-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-014-3952-3