Abstract
Sand flies are important vectors of cutaneous leishmaniasis, especially along coastal towns of northwestern Libya where an estimated 20,000 cases have occurred from 2004 to 2009. Host-seeking traps are an important tool for sampling sand fly populations and surveying the incidence of Leishmania major and L. tropica within a given population. We evaluated the capture efficiency of CO2-baited BG-Sentinel, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) light, CDC ultraviolet light, and nonbaited CO2 CDC light traps in 3 coastal townships during June, August, September, and November 2010. A total of 3,248 sand flies representing 8 species from 2 genera, were collected; most sand flies were identified as either Phlebotomus papatasi or P. longicuspis. Three of the traps captured significantly more sand flies compared to the BGSentinel baited with CO2 (P , 0.001). Three of 456 DNA pools extracted from sand flies were positive for Leishmania DNA, indicating a minimum estimated infection rate of 0.83% and 0.47% for P. papatasi and P. longicuspis, respectively.
Published in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, v28 n3 p179-183, 2012.