The Mosquito Ecology and Surveillance Laboratory (MESL) is located at the University of Texas at El Paso, a few hundred yards from the US-Mexico border and the city of Juárez, Mexico. With global warming, the importance of temperature-limited, mosquito-borne viral diseases in the United States is expected to increase, perhaps dramatically. The laboratory's mission is to increase knowledge of the natural history of the mosquitoes in the Greater El Paso-Juárez Region, especially in terms of the role of mosquitoes in the transmission of diseases to humans. In concert with local, state, and national entities, the laboratory studies the ecological parameters, population sizes, local distributions, and tests for the presence of arbovirus in local mosquitoes.
Fig. 1. A female Aedes aegypti feeding on a human. Photograph by James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), courtesy of the Public Health Image Library.
The menu allows entry to background material on regional mosquitoes and the viral diseases potentially carried by them, information on the potential for other viral mosquito-borne diseases to enter the region, current personnel and activities of the laboratory, and collaborating entities.
Video Link: Larval Mosquitos Please be patient--it takes time to load.
Video Link: Adult Mosquitos Please be patient--it takes time to load.