Akib Jahir

Mosquito control is a critical operational requirement for tropical resort islands, where guest comfort, staff wellbeing, and public health depend on effective management of biting insects. In many island tourism destinations, including the Maldives, mosquito control programs rely heavily on routine insecticide space spraying (fogging or misting). While such interventions can temporarily reduce adult mosquito abundance, their effects are often short-lived. High-frequency applications are therefore common practice but may create risks for human health, biodiversity, and fragile island ecosystems. Here, we examine how mosquito control in the Maldivian tourism and hospitality sector could transition from pesticide-dependent approaches toward ecological mosquito management practices. Drawing on operational experience from fourteen Maldivian resort islands and current knowledge of mosquito ecology, we compare conventional insecticide-based control with alternative approaches including surveillance-based management, larval habitat reduction or modification, biological control, mass trapping of mosquitoes, or combinations thereof. The geographically bounded nature of resort islands, combined with centralized management and strong sustainability commitments within the tourism sector, creates unusually favorable conditions for implementing integrated mosquito management strategies. We propose a practical transition framework that prioritizes monitoring, habitat management, and sustained population suppression while reducing or eliminating routine insecticide applications. Importantly, our operational experience demonstrates that implementation can be simple and practical, requiring only modest adjustments to existing resort operations. Such approaches can improve guest and staff safety, protect island biodiversity, reduce dependence on chemical pesticides, minimize the noise, olfactory and visual disturbances associated with routine fogging and mist-blower operations, and strengthen the environmental sustainability credentials of tropical tourism destinations.

Space spraying and mass trapping represent distinct adult mosquito control strategies with fundamentally different population-level consequences. We developed a density-regulated population model incorporating either pulsed mortality from spraying (efficacy α = 0.2–0.6 per application) or continuous proportional removal through trapping. Parameters were derived from empirical island datasets. Spraying produced rapid but transient reductions and required high-frequency re-application (weekly to daily) to approach structural suppression when α ≤ 0.4. Consistent with model predictions, analysis of Maldivian resort practices indicated that daily spraying is common in operational settings. In contrast, trapping shifted long-term equilibrium density and induced population collapse above a model-estimated threshold density that, under the baseline parameterization used here, corresponded to approximately 8–10 traps per hectare in geographically bounded island systems. Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that qualitative outcomes were robust across plausible parameter ranges. Economic comparison indicated that spraying frequencies required to match threshold trapping substantially increased cumulative cost. In small island settings with negligible immigration, threshold-based mass trapping provides a structurally stable pathway toward sustained suppression, whereas spraying remains primarily a rapid-response tool with limited durability under moderate-efficacy conditions. When potential ecological externalities and human health considerations associated with repeated insecticide use are considered, trapping may offer additional advantages beyond purely economic comparisons.