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Tressia Chikodza
Tressia Chikodza
Student
Grahamstown, South Africa

Public Documents 1
Double trouble: aquatic invasive plants can promote mosquitoes
Tressia Chikodza
Ross Cuthbert

Tressia Chikodza

and 6 more

June 20, 2025
Human activities continue to facilitate biological invasions, profoundly impacting our environment and economy. Plants and insects constitute the majority of invasions to date, with facilitative links established between them, particularly in terrestrial habitats. These relationships remain understudied in aquatic environments, including potential associations between aquatic invasive plants and disease vectors such as mosquitoes. Here, we synthesize current knowledge on the co-occurrence of aquatic invasive plants and mosquitoes, identify key research gaps, and present a conceptual framework underpinned by testable hypotheses on how aquatic invasive plants may influence immature and adult mosquito populations. We provide evidence suggesting that these plant-mosquito relationships could pose previously unrecognized risks and highlight priority areas for future research to better understand the potential public health implications of aquatic plant invasions. We call for targeted in situ and ex situ investigations to test the proposed hypotheses and increase our understanding on the interactions between aquatic invasive plants and mosquito population dynamics. Testing these hypotheses will inform adaptive, evidence-based management strategies to simultaneously control aquatic invasive species and vector mosquitoes.

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