Transcriptional profiling is an effective method of predicting age in the mosquito Aedes aegypti in the laboratory, however, its effectiveness is limited to younger mosquitoes. To address this we used a microarray to identify new gene candidates that show significant expression changes in older mosquitoes. These genes were then used to create a revised model, which upon evaluation in both laboratory and semi-field conditions, proved to have improved accuracy overall and for older mosquitoes. In association with the development of symbiont-based control strategies for Ae. aegypti, we also tested the model's accuracy for Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes and found no decline in performance. Our findings suggest that the new model is a robust and powerful tool for age determination in Australian Ae. aegypti populations.
© 2010 The Authors. Insect Molecular Biology © 2010 The Royal Entomological Society.