Our biosafety level 2 insectary provides a high quality and well secured environment in which researchers and students can easily and safely reared mosquitoes. The rooms’ temperature and hygrometry are monitored by a wireless thermo-humidifier system to ensure appropriate temperature and humidity levels. Each strain is reared separately in a dedicated room.

For each strain, larvae and adults are maintained in separate rooms due to their specificity for certain environmental conditions such as temperature. Indeed, to optimize their development, the temperature of the larvae rooms is constantly maintained between 28 and 31°C while those of the adults are maintained between 25 and 29°C. In addition to temperature, a relative humidity of 75 ± 10% is maintained in the adult room by means of humidifiers. Also, a photoperiod of 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness is maintained in the rearing rooms through clocks and switches built into the lighting system that allow the liht to be turned on at 06:00 and off at 18:00. The strains are characterised 3-4 times a year to monitor their fitness and insecticide susceptibility status.