Skip to main content
SLU publication database (SLUpub)

Abstract

Tropical mosquitoes transmit diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and Zika. Classifying mosquitoes by species, sex, age, and gravidity offers vital insights for assessing transmission risk and effective mitigations. Photonic monitoring for mosquito classification can be used in distributed sensors or lidars on longer ranges. However, a reflectance model and its parameters are lacking in the current literature. This study investigates mosquitoes of different species, sexes, age groups, and gravidity states, and reports metric pathlengths of wing chitin, body melanin, and water. We use hyperspectral push-broom imaging and laser multiplexing with a rotation stage to measure near-infrared spectra from different angles and develop simple models for spectral reflectance, including wing thickness and equivalent absorption path lengths for melanin and water. We demonstrate wing thickness of 174 (+/- 1) nm - the thinnest wings reported to our knowledge. Water and melanin pathlengths are determined with similar to 10 mu m precision, and spectral models achieve adjusted R-2 values exceeding 95%. While mosquito aspect angle impacts the optical cross-section, it alters shortwave infrared spectra minimally (similar to 2%). These results demonstrate the potential for remote retrieval of micro- and nanoscopic mosquito features using spectral sensors and lidars irrespective of insect body orientation. Improved specificity of vector monitoring can be foreseen.

Keywords

Mosquito; biophotonics; thin-film; tissue spectroscopy; ballistic light; small animal imaging; hyperspectral; lidar; remote microscopy

Published in

Applied Spectroscopy
2025
Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Zoology

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00037028251341317

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142506