Mosquito species geographical distribution in Iraq 2009

Background & objectives: Mosquitoes transmit diseases to >700 million people annually. Malaria kills threemillion persons every year, including one child every 30 sec. Worldwide there are >3000 mosquito species.In Iraq, 37 species have been identified in different surveys over several decades. We conducted an entomologicalsurvey to determine the mosquito species and their distribution in Iraq in 2009.Methods: Between January 20 and December 31, 2009, mosquitoes in houses in 12 Iraqi provinces werecollected and speciated. Five to 10 villages were selected randomly in each province and in each village 10houses were selected randomly to collect mosquitoes and the density of mosquitoes per room was calculated.Kits for entomological investigation were used and the collected mosquitoes were sent to the vector bornedisease section laboratory for classification using the Naval Medical Research Unit 3 standard classificationkey.Results: A total of 29,156 mosquitoes were collected, representing two genera: Anopheles (n=13,268, or 46%of the total collected) and Culex (n=15,888, or 54% of the total collected). Four Anopheles (An. pulcherrimus,An. stephensi, An. superpictus, and An. sacharovi) and one Culex (Cx. pipiens) species were identified. Anophelespulcherrimus was found in 11 provinces, An. stephensi in 7, An. superpictus in 2 and An. sacharovi in oneprovince, while Cx. pipiens was found in all the 12 provinces. Two peaks of mosquito density were found: thefirst from April–June and the other from September–October.Interpretation & conclusion: There are clear differences in Anopheles mosquito species geographical distributionand density among Iraqi provinces, while Cx. pipiens mosquitoes are distributed all over Iraq. All mosquitogenera show clear seasonal density variation. The study highlights that the manual mosquito classification isnot enough to identify all the species of mosquitoes in Iraq