🦟⚠️ CURRENT SITUATION
Increasingly, European researchers are discovering invasive mosquitoes in more and more places. These mosquitoes, and also some indigenous mosquitoes, can carry viruses and infect people. As a result of globalisation, and a change in the way people and commercial travel, mosquitoes can spread more easily around the world. In Europe, in recent years, there have been cases of people infected by some of these diseases, such as West Nile in the Netherlands, or dengue fever in Spain.
Since the health of people, animals and the environment are interrelated, the most effective way to fortify against these new risks is to work in an interdisciplinary way, known as «One Health».
Tracking mosquitoes, discovering their activity patterns, understanding their interactions with humans and finding their breeding sites is no easy task. This is valuable information that allows scientists to create predictive models to forecast and prevent epidemics. But doing this work alone would be a very difficult task, so we need your help!
✅ WHAT WE ARE ASKING YOU TO DO (YOUR OBJECTIVE)
The scientific team asks you to carry out a small research project through citizen science and in the field of disease-transmitting mosquitoes. You will have to summarise your work in a scientific poster in which you will present your results.
In this type of study, scientists from different fields work together, each doing their bit to build knowledge and tools that are useful for managing mosquito-borne diseases.
Just like real scientists do, they ask you to become one of them and come up with some simple research that you can carry out yourself.
THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME
To help you achieve your goal, we have organised the educational programme in phases:
- Theoretical orientation: where you will learn many things about mosquitoes, citizen science, technological tools, etc.
- Practical orientation: Where you will practice with the Mosquito Alert app.
- Development of your research: Where you will elaborate a researchable question and carry out an investigation to solve it.
- Discussion and conclusion: Where you will have to present the results of your research in a scientific poster.
- Evaluation: Everything you do will be continuously evaluated, and here you will have to see what grade your project has achieved.
👥 WHO PARTICIPATES IN THIS PROGRAMME?
This educational programme has been built up from the different editions held since 2016. Currently, primary schools and secondary schools from both Spain and the Netherlands are participating. The main promoters of the programme are: Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, the Dutch One Health Pact Consortium of which the Technasium Foundation is a member, the Barcelona Public Health Agency, the Barcelona Citizen Science Office and the Science City Network, among others.
🔗 SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Do you want to go deeper? Here are some complementary resources:
- Videos where experiences from previous years are collected:
- 10 key things about mosquitoes: Kahoot version / Prezi version
- Do you like solving puzzles? Work with your team to overcome this BreakOut!