In the hands of the municipal authority of Limassol and the co-competent bodies is now the study,carried out by Ecodevelopment to deal with the mosquito nuisance in the wider area of West Limassol in Cyprus (field work in the period 06/2021- 08/2022). The specific study was financed by three large real estate companies of international scope, which are implementing major development projects in the area. For several years the problem of mosquito nuisance in this area has been reported as particularly important and there are three different agencies involved in mosquito control: the Ministry of Health of Cyprus, the municipality of Limassol and the English bases.
The study under the general title “Integrated Mosquito Control in West Limassol – Proposal for an Action Plan’, concerned five individual tasks. During the course of the study the following actions were implemented:
- Mapping of potential mosquito breeding sites
- Monitoring mosquito population dynamics
- Creation of a geodatabase and use of Ecodevelopment’s e-bite platform to record field data
- Surface water monitoring using earth observation data and water level sensors
- Development of an action plan
The study was carried out under the coordination of Sandra Gewehr, with technical support from Xanthi Tseni. In this specific study, the company’s executives: Paris Tsagaris, Kostas Iordanidis, Antonis Karagiannis, Nikos Lazos and Nikos Kelemenis contributed in terms of expertise and participated in field work.
Among other things, it was found that the urban system, about 12% of the rainwater wells mainly in the urban fabric of Limassol retain water and 25% of them are regularly productive in mosquito larvae, therefore they need systematic monitoring and larvicide applications. The Akrotiri wetland was found to be the most productive area in floodplain mosquitoes Ae. caspius but mainly Ae. detritus that cause the greatest nuisance in the wider area of West Limassol, but the continuous production of mosquitoes of the genus Culex should not be neglected, especially in the area of Livadi.
