Three-year surveillance of culicine mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) for flavivirus infections in Incheon Metropolitan City and Hwaseong-si of Gyeonggi-do Province, Republic of Korea

Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) is a single stranded positive sense RNA virus of the genus Flavivirus that belongs to family Flaviviridae and emerged as one of the most pivotal form of viral encephalitis. The virus is transmitted to humans by mosquito vector and is an etiological agent of acute zoonotic infection. In this study, we investigated distribution and density over 3-year period in central regions of Korean peninsula. We selected two cities as mosquito-collecting locations and subdivided them into five collection sites; downtown Incheon Metropolitan City as a typical urban area, and the Hwaseong-si area as a rural area. A total of 35,445 female culicine mosquitoes were collected using black light traps or BG Sentinel™ traps from March to November 2016–2018. Aedes (Ae.) vexans nipponii was the most frequently collected specimens (48.91%), followed by Culex (Cx.) pipiens (32.05%), Ochlerotatus (Och.) dorsalis (13.58%), Och. koreicus (1.68%), and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus (1.49%). In the urban area, Cx. pipiens was the predominant species (92.21%) and the other species accounted for