The Abundance Cycles of Arboreal Mosquitoes during Six Years at a Sylvan Yellow Fever Locality in Panama

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Abstract
The problem of how sylvan yellow fever crossed from eastern Panama through the Canal Zone area and into western Panama and Central America in the period since 1948 has been a subject of much interest. Recent papers which deal with the matter in part have been those of Trapido, Galindo and Carpenter (1955) and Trapido and Galindo (1956a). It has been pointed out that the forest canopy mosquito fauna known to be involved in the transmission of sylvan yellow fever becomes depauperate during the dry season characteristic of the Pacific slope, and that the gap in the mountain system marked by the location of the Panama Canal is an area of transition from the wet and dry deciduous forest conditions of the Pacific slope to the wet rain-forest conditions of the Caribbean slope of western Panama. But on the Pacific side of eastern Panama there is also a gradual transition from tropical deciduous forest in the lowlands and on lower slopes to climatic and vegetation conditions approaching those of tropical rain-forest on the upper slopes (Trapido and Galindo, 1956b). The purpose of the present communication is to present the results of six years of collecting forest canopy mosquitoes at Cerro La Victoria, some 15 miles east of the Panama Canal, and to demonstrate the magnitude of the year to year fluctuations in the populations of these mosquitoes as this may be related to the maintenance of the sylvan yellow fever cycle in the area.

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