Sudbury researcher develops mosquito trap: home Hardware to carry the traps by February 2015.

• Author: Migneault, Jonathan
• Position: SUDBURY

Amosquito trap developed by a Laurentian University researcher will find its way to Home Hardware stores across Canada by the new year.

Laurentian University chemistry professor Gerardo Ulibarri, who focuses on medial chemistry and preventative health, teamed up with Waterloo-based company Maxtech Mosquito Control Inc. to develop an ovitrap--a device that resembles a bucket with a funnel, that uses attractants to lure mosquitoes and have them lay their eggs in the trap.

The trap features paper landing strips where certain species of mosquitoes--those that carry diseases harmful to humans--lay their eggs.

Every few days a water pump--operated manually, or in some models, with an electric motor--washes the eggs down the funnel into a filter.

Once the filter dries, the eggs inside die.

The water at the bottom of the bucket is recycled and used to wash out more mosquito eggs.

Maxtech Mosquito Control's consumer version of the product will be available for retail in February 2015 for $300 under the company's Greenstrike brand.

Ashwani Kapur, director of Maxtech Mosquito Control, said the patented device received positive feedback at a Home Hardware Conference in St. Jacob's, where the retailer is headquartered.

Ulibarri first became interested in mosquito-borne illnesses when Sudbury had a west Nile virus scare in 2003.

"I saw how the health units in Manitoba and Ontario were fogging streets to control the outbreak," he said.

He figured there must be a better way to control mosquito populations than to use large amounts of pesticides that can be harmful to wild animals, pets and even human populations.

To deal with the problem in, a less harmful way, Ulibarri helped develop developed his ovitrap. "If you can collect the eggs, you can destroy the eggs," he said.

Tests in Sudbury found the ovitraps reduced the population of west Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes by 80 per cent in areas surrounding the traps.

The next step was to test the ovitraps in warmer tropical countries, where mosquito-borne illnesses are more common and dangerous to human health than in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ulibarri conducted a small study, funded by the Pan-American Health Organization, to install his ovitraps in Mexico, north of Acapulco.

The new traps had attractants used to draw in mosquito species that carry dengue fever, a viral infection that has flu-like symptoms and can lead to severe complications and even death.

The World Health Organization estimates there are...