How do you tell a gal’s age? Methods for age grading female mosquitoes

Techniques for determining the physiological age of female mosquitoes are not widely used by mosquito control agencies, but can provide useful information about local mosquito populations. We have found practical applications for age grading techniques in our district and would like to share them with other agencies. Age determination using two separate techniques was pioneered by Detinova in 1962. We present detailed, illustrated descriptions for determining parity using tracheal analysis and a refined ovarian dissection technique.