From the Proceedings of NJMCA. Please use the following citation when referring to this article:
Kent, R. 1989. Surveillance Techniques: Uniformity, Consistency and Reliability . Proceedings of the Seventy-Sixth Annual Meeting of the New Jersey Mosquito Control Association, Inc. p 16 (introduction), p 55 (closing remarks).
Moderator: ROBERT KENT
Office of Mosquito Control Coordination, N.J. Department of Environmental Protection, CN 400, Trenton, NJ 08625
Introduction to the Symposium
This symposium is the result of a challenge that was issued to the Association at the 1988 meeting in Asbury Park. In a presentation regarding the Airspray Program, a series of Nuisance Level Indices were proposed to stimulate surveillance and address the fact that turnover in personnel results in questions about how our work should be done.
There is a very real need to standardize the way we do things in our various control programs. We must promote reliability in our search for uncommon species such as Aedes albopictus and upgrade the level of our ongoing mosquito surveillance identification programs. (During the last year, at least two reports were submitted which indicated collection of mosquito species which are not found anywhere in the Northeast). We must be able to provide surveillance data that unquestionably justifies our work with pesticides and water management.
The purpose of this symposium is suggested in the title: to make our surveillance techniques perform with uniformity, consistency and reliability. Our intention is to offer guidelines with the hope that our individual agencies will develop a standard. This is the purpose of our Association as an educational organization. We are not the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, we are not the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, we are the New Jersey Mosquito Control Association. Our input is not related to politics or governmental economics. Our challenge is to come up with a professional basis for the way surveillance should be done.
Each member of this panel will discuss a subject area and offer suggested guidelines. This will be followed by a question and answer period. The final product will appear as printed recommendations in the Proceedings of this Association.
(Papers included New Jersey Light trap, CDC Trap, Landing Rates, Complaints, and Larval Surveillance. Included on this web site is also an article at a later meeting on resting boxes.)
Closing Remarks
As a result of this symposium (and our many meetings that were held in preparation for the symposium), this panel has several additional recommendations to the guidelines that have been presented.
- We recommend that each county mosquito control agency have at least one full time person entirely dedicated to the effort of surveillance. (This symposium has revealed that only 50% of the agencies presently comply).
- We endorse the recommendation of the New Jersey State Mosquito Control Commission and the Associated Executives of Mosquito Control Work in New Jersey for a full time surveillance specialist assigned to the N.J. Agricultural Experiment Station.
- We endorse the concept of training and certification of mosquito biologists by the Experiment Station.
Many county mosquito control agencies have taken strides to improve their programs in the last five years by assigning surveillance responsibilities to a specific individual and supporting their needs for workspace, time, microscopes and computer equipment. These counties deserve recognition for this commitment; they set an example for the balance of our programs.