Anopheles mosquitoes discovered in Frankfurt: Search for malaria vectors

Last Saturday Andreas Krüger went hunting. He is looking for Anopheles mosquitoes, the carriers of malaria. However, not in tropical Africa, where the disease occurs regularly - Krüger is traveling in a nature reserve on the outskirts of Frankfurt. Photos show that wooden paths run through the Schwanheimer Dune. Tall grass, gnarled trees, and two gravel pits in the middle where you can catch zander and eels. Or just mosquitoes.

“Between the gravel pits there are two small ponds, one of which was about to dry out,” says Krüger, head of medical zoology at the Bundeswehr Central Hospital in Koblenz. These shallow pools with their bankside plants immediately struck him as ideal breeding grounds for Anopheles mosquitoes. “And we actually found what we were looking for in the last pond.” Using a ladle, Krüger and an employee from the Frankfurt Health Department fish mosquitoes in the larval or pupal stage out of the water. Three of them belong to the Anopheles maculipennis group. Krüger then sends them to the Hamburg Institute for Tropical Medicine. Genetic analyzes should now show whether they belong to the species Anopheles atroparvus. This species can transmit the Plasmodium falciparum parasite with its bite, which causes malaria.