Community kitchen gardens as breeding sites of Aedes albopictus, in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture

Abstract

Many residents (more than 55 out of 570 houses in the community) of Makinohara town, Matsudo city in Chiba Prefecture use community kitchen gardens. Most of them leave water containers in the gardens for watering vegetables; however, the containers serve as breeding sites for Aedes albopictus. The containers examined ranged from plastic bottles to washbasins, buckets, watering cans, pickle tubs, and bathtubs. Larvae were collected from more than 90％ of the containers that kept them from late June through early September, and many adult mosquitoes were captured from gardens that had shade trees. Conversely, it was observed that there were fewer mosquitoes in farming sites of professional farmers, which lacked shade trees, as the farmers use water tanks that they bring in pickup cars.