Projekt

Daten zum Projekt

Mobile Mosquitoes - understanding the entangled mobilities of Aedes mosquitoes and humans in India, Mexico, Tanzania and Germany

Initiative: Globale Herausforderungen
Ausschreibung: Mobility - Global Medicine and Health Research
Bewilligung: 03.12.2021
Laufzeit: 4 Jahre

Projektinformationen

This project establishes an interdisciplinary research consortium of medical entomologists, ecologists, anthropologists and geographers to study the entangled mobilities of humans and Aedes mosquitoes in India, Mexico, Tanzania and Germany. The invasive mosquito species Aedes, vector for a variety of arboviral diseases, is taken as a paradigmatic case of how human and nonhuman mobility converge in contemporary societies. The team will monitor the presence and abundance of Aedes mosquitoes in and through human transport.This will shed light on the socioecological dynamics that stem from these entangled mobilities, answering the question what role infrastructures play in the transmission of infectious diseases. Understanding human-mediated dispersal empirically will increase the predictive power of models by taking into account how the lived geographies of Aedes and humans intersect. Based on the results of the pilot phase, the project aims at producing scientific evidence for understanding risk exposure, mitigating adverse events and developing mobility-related measures in response to Aedes and its associated global health challenges. The project is designed as a cross-disciplinary study with sampling methods from entomology and molecular biology (a.o. ELISA, sequencing for population genomics and eDNA analyses) as well as social sciences (semi-structured interviews, participant observation, ethnographic method ?goalong"). It will facilitate pro-active community engagement by involving citizens and decisionmakers along the research and developing living maps for documentation. As a result, overlaying mobility maps will provide a transnational cartography of entangled human and mosquito mobility in Tanzania, India, Mexico and Germany.

Projektbeteiligte

  • Prof. Dr. Ulrike Beisel

    Freie Universität Berlin
    Institut für Geographische Wissenschaften
    Fachrichtung Anthropogeographie
    Berlin

  • Dr. Carsten Wergin

    Universität Heidelberg
    Faculty of Behavioural and Cultural Studies
    Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS)
    Anthropology
    Heidelberg

  • Dr. Fredros Okumu

    Ifakara Health Research and Development
    Centre (IHRDC)
    Institute of Science and Technology
    Dar es Salaam
    Tansania (Tanzania)

  • Prof. Dr. Gerardo Suzán, Ph.D.

    Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico
    School of Veterinary Medicine (FMVZ)
    Mexico City
    Mexiko

  • Dr. Ashwani Kumar

    Indian Council of Medical Research
    Vector Control Research Centre
    New Delhi
    Indien