By Cameron Webb, Stephen Doggett and Richard ... Reviewed by Scott A. Ritchie. James Cook ... Stephen Doggett and Richard Russell is a tour de force of ...
Book Review
doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12661
A guide to mosquitoes of Australia By Cameron Webb, Stephen Doggett and Richard Russell; Published by CSIRO Publishing, 2016. ISBN 9780643100305; 216 pages; RRP $49.95. Reviewed by Scott A. Ritchie James Cook University
I am writing at my favourite time of year: warm, wet and time off to enjoy the latest from the reading lists that abound. Well, being that it is summer, mosquitoes come to mind. And the latest from the CSIRO publishing group offers a guidebook to Australian mosquitoes that will serve both as an intellectual treat and a handy mozzie swatter should the need arise. A guide to mosquitoes of Australia by Cameron Webb, Stephen Doggett and Richard Russell is a tour de force of everything you needed to know about the Ozzie mozzie. All three authors are highly respected biologists from the University of Sydney specialising in medical entomology, particularly mosquitoes. In addition to the informative text, the guide is highlighted by the wonderful photographs of mosquitoes and the lovely landscapes – saltmarshes, mangroves and cluttered backyards – they call home. Indeed, the book was a recipient of ‘Best Natural History Guide’ at the 2016 Whitley Awards by the Royal Zoological Society of NSW. The guide book is quite more than just a photo tour of mosquitoes. In addition to a summary of 80 of the most common mosquitoes in Australia, it details general information on mosquito biology, their public health risk, and how your taxpayer dollar is used to combat them. The book is organised into two sections. The first half contains expert discussion of a variety of mosquito-related issues, starting with mosquito biology, followed by public health risks, DIY mosquito control, how to collect and rear mosquitoes and finally, personal protection from mosquito bites. This section is amply interspersed with sidebars covering “everything you ever wanted to know about mosquitoes …”. For example, one section describes the unusual biology of mosquitoes of the genus Malaya that solicit regurgitated food from the belly of Crematogaster ants! I have been lucky enough to collect larvae of
this strange mosquito in the Cairns Botanical Gardens, but have never witnessed its unusual drinking habits. Another sidebar discusses why mosquitoes attack some people more than others; blame it on my skin, it appears. One of my favourite sidebars is the “Curious case of airport dengue”. I had worked on a similar case of ‘airport malaria’ in Cairns back in 1996 and so this had professional appeal to me. In 2010, a resident of Darwin came down with dengue despite no overseas travel history, and could not have contracted dengue via the bite from an infected local Aedes aegypti mosquito. After all, the Northern Territory (NT) medical entomology program has kept the NT almost exclusively free of this dengue vector for the past 60 years. But this “unlucky resident” did live close to the Darwin airport, and there were flights originating from Bali where the dengue vector was common. Evidently, the infected mosquito slipped past security, hitched a ride on the plane, disembarked in Darwin, flew to the area the resident lived in and finally bit the poor bloke who subsequently went down in the public health archives as the first documented victim of airport dengue in Australia. This extreme case demonstrates how exotic vectors can potentially readily enter our country, and thus the importance of mosquito surveillance and control programs at our first ports. Readers will find the sections dealing with how they can prevent mosquito breeding on their property, and what repellents actually work, very useful. Some of the most important diseases impacting the tropics, such as dengue and Zika, are carried by mosquitoes that use water filled domestic containers (e.g. tyres, birdbaths and pot plant bases) as larval habitat. With this simple bit of knowledge, homeowners can reduce local mosquito populations and disease risk by simply cleaning up their yard, storing containers dry and filling pot plant bases with sand. Also, there is a plethora of mosquito repellents and zappers available to the public. Do they all work? This chapter provides an excellent discussion of what really works and what simply puts money into the pocket of the manufacturer. Hint: beware the bracelets and sound-based zappers. The second section is where the book really shines. A rogues’ gallery of the common Australian mosquitoes is provided that
includes a description of the mosquito, its habitat, pest and vector status, map of occurrence and the wonderful photographs of mosquitoes by Steve Doggett. There is also a useful section on mosquito morphology and how they are named. But the real meat of the section is the award-winning photographs. Steve is the foremost mosquito photographer in Australia, indeed globally, and his pictures bring out the beauty and even humour in these much-maligned insects. The “Beauty in mosquitoes” sidebar highlights the intrigue and awe that the finely laced silver scales on the back of an Aedes notoscriptus engender. My personal favourite is the aptly named Tripteroides magnesianus with its hammered silver sheen reminiscent of polished magnesium. And my favourite fun shot is that of a female Culex hilli, standing tall and erect like a goal defense on the netball team. In addition to stock photos of biting adult female mosquitoes, Steve also provides excellent photographs of eggs, larvae and pupae. I found the sequence pictures of emerging Toxorhynchites and “defecating” Anopheles farauti entertaining and educational. For those who are interested in the finer details of how to photograph the seemingly impossible, there is an excellent sidebar on the issue. As a reviewer, I feel the obligation to find some error or missed opportunity, however small, just to prove I read the book. This text is amazingly clean, with no noticeable typos or errors, and the writing lucid and accessible to the general audience. It was a joy to read … and peruse! I do think the section on mosquito control could have been expanded to include a brief description of the new ‘rear and release’ strategies being used to control dengue in Queensland. These new methods deploy the release of thousands of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that mate with wild mosquitoes and infect them with the bacteria Wolbachia. The presence of this bacteria acts like a vaccine, blocking virus multiplication in the mosquito and thus preventing dengue transmission. This revolutionary approach was first developed and field-trialled in Australia, and may lead the way for control of dengue and Zika viruses in the years to come. This is but a minor criticism, and overall I found the book a charming addition that will be useful to health workers and anyone interested in mosquitoes. Which means just about all of us!
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
2017 Online
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health © 2017 The Authors
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