Billions of Bodies --

[John Shuey]

To add a little to this discussion, back in the early 1980's (when bug zappers first became available and in wide use in the US), the late Dr. Craig of Notre Dame University evaluated if they actually worked from the perspective of home owners getting relief from biting  mosquitos.  He had his grad students literally stand in people's back yards (with and without zappers), take their shirts off, and count the attack rate by mosquitos per unit time.  By the time they accounted for all
potential variables (differences in bait quality mostly), the residual differences actually indicated that the attack rate was higher in yards with zappers.  As I recall, they attributed this as a random effect, and concluded that zappers had absolutely no effect on the bite rate in yards "protected" by zappers.

As usual, I'm writing about foggy recollections of papers I read over a decade ago.  If you want to track it down for yourself, it was probably in the old journal; "Mosquito News" (now renamed to something more official sounding) between 1980 and 1984.


John Shuey



 
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