Larval site characteristics of mosquito Aedes aegypti in Rabai, Kenya

This dataset is described and analyzed in the paper: "Xia,
S., Dweck, H. K. M., Lutomiah, J., Sang, R., McBride, C. S., Rose, N. H.,
Ayala, D., & Powell, J. R. (2021). Larval sites of the
mosquito Aedes aegypti formosus in forest and domestic
habitats in Africa and the potential association with oviposition
evolution. Ecology and Evolution, 00, 1–
17. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8332" The
mosquito Ae. aegypti is a major vector of
several arboviral diseases. In Africa, Ae. aegypti can
be found in both ancestral forest habitats and human-made domestic
habitats, such as villages. They also use different types of containers as
larval sites: while the forest Ae. aegypti use tree
holes and rock pools, the domestic populations rely mostly on artificial
contains such as plastic buckets. As an initial attempt to better
understand Ae. aegypti larval ecology and evolution in
different habitats, we characterized the
microenvironment of their larval sites in both habitats and
compare them. We focus on two localities in Africa: La Lope in Gabon, and
Rabai in Kenya. The current dataset contains data from Rabai and
the La Lope data can be found in a different dataset
(DOI:10.5061/dryad.7m0cfxprg). In this dataset, we characterized
31 Ae. aegypti larval site from four Rabai
villages and 37 larval sites from the Rabai forest. Specifically, the
first ten columns of the dataset provide basic information of each larval
site, such as sampling location, date, and habitat, etc. The data also
includes the measures of 16 physical variables of each larva site. These
variables describe the size of the container, ambient
environment such as temperature and humidity, and water pH
and conductivity, etc. Lastly, the dataset has the number
of Ae. aegypti and other mosquito species found in each
larval site, as well as measures of microbial density. In addition, we
also examined the chemical composition of volatiles from a subset of 42
larval sites. Using GC-MS, we identified chemical compounds in each larval
site. Using these datasets, we found that forest and village
larval sites have different microenvironments. The detailed analysis and
discussion can be found in the paper. We hope this dataset could provide
useful basic ecological information on Ae.
aegypti larval habitat in Africa. We encourage future studies to
explore this dataset and generate more hypotheses on Ae.
aegypti ecology and evolution.