NIRS Model Trained on Lab-reared Mosquitoes Estimates Age of Wild Mosquitoes with 67% similarity to Ovary Dissection Method (Detinova)

Different studies have demonstrated that near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) accurately classifies the age of lab-reared mosquitoes with accuracy greater than 80%. Despite the ability of near-infrared spectrometry to classify the age of lab-reared mosquitoes, it is unknown if NIRS can classify the age of wild mosquitoes because we lack age-labeled wild mosquitoes with which to train a model. Training a model using labels from ovary dissection yields a model with poor accuracy. Applying a model trained on spectra from lab-reared mosquitoes to estimate the age of wild mosquitoes was unjustifiable until Milali et al. ran a cluster analysis on a mixture of spectra collected from lab-reared and wild mosquitoes of the same species. They found no clear difference between spectra collected from lab-reared mosquitoes and those collected from wild mosquitoes.