Ten years of the Tiger: Aedes albopictus presence in Australia since its discovery in the Torres Strait in 2005

The "Asian tigermosquito", Aedes albopictus, is highly invasive, an aggressive biter and amajor arbovirus vector. It is not currently present onmainland Australia despite being intercepted on numerous occasions at international ports and infesting the Torres Strait of Australia since at least 2004. In the current paper, we describe the invasion and current status of Ae. albopictus in the Torres Strait, as well as research conducted to assess the threat of this species becoming established in arbovirus transmission cycles on the Australian mainland. Genetic analysis of the invading population demonstrated that the Indonesian regionwas the likely origin of the invasion and not Papua New Guinea (PNG) as initially suspected. There was also intermixing between Torres Strait, PNG and Indonesian populations, indicating that the species could be re-introduced into the Torres Strait compromising any successful eradication programme. Vector competence experiments with endemic and exotic viruses revealed that Ae. albopictus from the Torres Strait are efficient alphavirus vectors, but less efficient flavivirus vectors. Ae. albopictus obtains blood meals from a range of vertebrate hosts (including humans), indicating that it could play a role in both zoonotic and human-mosquito arbovirus transmission cycles in Australia. Predictive models coupled with climate tolerance experiments suggest that a Torres Strait strain of Ae. albopictus could colonise southern Australia by overwintering in the egg stage before proliferating in the warmermonths. Cohabitation experiments demonstrated that the presence of Aedes notoscriptus larvae in containerswould not prevent the establishment of Ae. albopictus. Evidence fromthese studies, coupledwith global experience suggests thatwe need to be prepared for the imminent invasion of Australia by Ae. albopictus by thoroughly understanding its biology and being willing to embrace emerging control technologies. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.