Tackling mosquitoes in Italy:
From Citizen To Bench and Back

MosqIT project brings together the skills of 4 high-qualified research Units with a long-standing experience in mosquito basic and applied research to collaborate towards the achievement of 4 major objectives with high scientific and translational value to reduce the risk of MBDs in Italy:

1- ENHANCING RESOURCES FOR MOSQUITO RESEARCH by creating a BioBank of mosquito samples and data for retrospective and prospective studies.

2- ENHANCING THE CURRENT KNOWLEDGE ON MOSQUITOES IN ITALY by exploiting photographic records and data on human-mosquito contacts using the MosquitoAlert app for mobile phones, a novel infrastructure available in Italy since October 2020 which will be advertised within MosqIT dissemination activities.

3- ENHANCING RESOURCES FOR MOSQUITO SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL by developing user-friendly and accessible tools to easily analyse real time MosquitoAlert and MosqIT BioBank data. These tools will be
released open-source to favour ‘precision mosquito control’ implementation.

4- PROVIDING NEW CONCEPTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL-FRIENDLY MOSQUITO CONTROL, with specific reference to “smart” eco-friendly biolarvicides that combine ‘attracting’ and ‘entomopathogenic’ properties of
mosquito mycobiota.

Importantly, MosqIT is built with the perspective of working with and for society. Citizens will be engaged for data and sample collection (‘from citizen to bench’) and will be recipients of knowledge and products developed through the project (‘from scientists to citizen’). Finally, MosqIT promotes human capital growth by including several postdoctoral fellows and phD students, thus extending its benefits to the new generation of scientists.