Using Mobile Phones as Acoustic Sensors for the Surveillance of Spatio-temporal Mosquito Ecology

The lack of high-throughput, low-cost surveillance techniques is a serious impediment to effective control and prevention of mosquito-borne diseases worldwide. Here, we demonstrate that mobile phones are a powerful tool for probing mosquito populations through their species-specific wingbeat acoustic signatures. We establish that a wide range of phones, including low-cost models, sensitively acquire mosquito sounds with high fidelity. We survey major medically relevant mosquito species to show how mobile phone recordings, combining acoustics with metadata (time, location), enable species identification. Finally, we carry out a field demonstration as proof-of-concept, with users spatio-temporally mapping mosquitoes using personal phones. Thus, the global availability of mobile phones, combined with their potential for engaging citizen scientists in ecological surveillance, enables continuous acquisition of mosquito surveillance data in disease-stricken areas.