By 2050, nearly 70% of the global population will be living in cities, as a result of the growing worldwide urbanization trend. Promoting a new urban model based on greener cities, with more vegetation, biodiversity and environmental sustainability, will be crucial to mitigating climate change and improving public health and well-being. However, the new green habitats can also have adverse effects on the population, such as the proliferation of mosquito populations, which are vectors of diseases (including West Nile fever, dengue or leishmaniasis, among others), or the constant presence of invasive species such as the Asian tiger mosquito.
Exploring the relationships between urban green spaces, the biodiversity of haematophagous arthropods and the risk of vector-borne disease transmission is the objective of the BIODIVECITY project (Greening cities as nature-based solutions and their impact on vectors and vector-borne disease risks), funded until 2028 under the Biodiversa+ 2023 call.
The project will integrate a broad perspective on sustainability and climate change, global health and emerging diseases, innovative technologies and big data, open science, and internationalization and application of research in public policy and decision-making. BIODIVECITY is co-funded by the European Union and the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), and is carried out by an international consortium led by Sander Koenraadt of Wageningen University (the Netherlands), with participation from institutions in Spain, France and Morocco.
At a national level, it is led by Professor Magdalena Alcover, from the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences at the University of Barcelona. Also participating are the experts Xavier Fernandez-Cassi, Roser Fisa and Xavier Roca, from the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, and Rosina Gironès, dean of the UB's Faculty of Biology; Beatriz Escudero, from Hospital Clínic de Barcelona; Laura Barahona and Tomás Montalvo, from the Barcelona Public Health Agency (ASPB), and Elisa Mora and Frederic Bartumeus (Blanes Centre for Advanced Studies, CEAB-CSIC), of the citizen science platform Mosquito Alert, created to research and control disease-transmitting mosquitoes.
This September, the BIODIVECITY project will be open to citizen participation via the Mosquito Alert app as part of the Digital BiodiveCITY BioBlitz activity .
Take part in the research with Mosquito Alert
Citizen participation is essential to the success of BIODIVECITY. During this September, anyone can use the free Mosquito Alert app, a citizen science tool from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) that allows users to report the presence of mosquitoes, bites received and their breeding sites using their mobile phone. The observations collected will help research teams to better understand how urban green spaces influence the distribution of vector mosquitoes and to generate useful knowledge for designing healthier, more resilient cities. Taking part is simple: just download the app, take a photograph of the mosquito or potential breeding site and submit the observation. Every contribution helps to advance disease prevention and sustainable urban planning.
