Mosquitoes

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Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a family of small flies consisting of about 3,600 known species. Mosquitoes have a thin segmented body, one pair of wings, three pairs of long hair-like legs, and specialized, highly elongated, piercing-sucking mouthparts. All mosquitoes drink nectar from flowers; females of some species are evolutionarily adapted to drink blood from vertebrates.

Quotes

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  • As time went on, I began to think the reputation of the Lapland mosquito had been exaggerated. Mosquitoes were common, but certainly not in the concentrated numbers I had heard of. The reindeer must be timid animals indeed, I decided, to be troubled by so few mosquitoes. Gradually, however, I began to scratch more frequently. Soon they attacked in such clouds that one was forced to breathe through clenched teeth to avoid making a meal of them. The wet Lapland summer ground was perfect for mosquito breeding. Unless there was a good breeze, to go outside was to suffer. Standard mosquito sprays and lotions were pitifully ineffective.
  • In Kenya and the Comoros, the vector of the chikungunya virus was Aedes aegypti, the vector previously reported to be involved in transmission in Africa and Asia. In contrast, in Reunion and Mauritius, A. albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito, was the primary vector. The devastating outbreak resulted from a human–mosquito–human cycle that, as in dengue, did not require an external nonhuman reservoir. A. albopictus is also prevalent in Mayotte and Madagascar, but it is unclear which vector was involved in most islands of the Comorian archipelago, where studies have not been conducted or are ongoing. There is recent evidence that the outbreak in India, where A. aegypti is the primary species of mosquito, was caused by the new variant of the virus. ... A. albopictus is generally considered to have a lower vector capacity for arboviruses than A. aegypti. Specific mosquito populations, however, may have a high vector capacity, ... as suggested by a massive outbreak of dengue that was propagated by A. albopictus in Reunion in 1977. It is also possible that the strain of chikungunya virus in the Indian Ocean became better adapted to the A. albopictus vector.
  • … while mosquito management is a necessary public health service, common methods of control –aerial and ground spraying of pesticides– not only have questionable efficacy, but can also harm non-target organisms like pollinators, whose populations are already suffering elevated losses.
    … commonly used mosquito control pesticides and their application can potentially harm bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects, ultimately affecting overall biodiversity. While we do not underestimate the threat from new and current mosquito-borne diseases, an ideal mosquito management strategy adopts an integrated approach that emphasizes education, aggressive removal of breeding sites (such as standing water), larval control, monitoring, and surveillance. Alternative strategies, including introducing mosquito-eating fish, encouraging predators, such as bats, birds, dragonflies, and frogs, and using least-toxic larvicides, like Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), can be applied successfully without endangering pollinators and other organisms.
  • ... The Sierra mosquitoes are courageous and of good size, some of them measuring nearly an inch from tip of sting to tip of folded wings. Though less abundant than in most wildernesses, they occasionally make quite a hum and stir, and pay but little attention to time or place. They sting anywhere, any time of day, wherever they can find anything worth while, until they themselves are stung by frost.
  • ... when the weather stays hot and mosquitoes are plenty, the hours of darkness, even in midsummer, seem painfully long. In the Bad Lands proper we are not often bothered very seriously by these winged pests; but in the low bottoms of the Big Missouri, and beside many of the reedy ponds and great sloughs out on the prairie, they are a perfect scourge. During the very hot nights, when they are especially active, the bed-clothes make a man feel absolutely smothered and yet his only chance for sleep is to wrap himself tightly up, head and all; and even then some of the pests will usually force their way in. At sunset I have seen the mosquitoes rise up from the land like a dense cloud, to make the hot, stifling night one long torture; the horses would neither lie down nor graze, traveling restlessly to and fro till daybreak, their bodies streaked and bloody, and the insects settling on them so as to make them all one color, a uniform gray; while the men, after a few hours' tossing about in the vain attempt to sleep, rose, built a little fire of damp sage brush, and thus endured the misery as best they could until it was light enough to work.
  • It may be difficult to love the mosquito, but anyone who comes to know her well develops a deep appreciation. A few species, like the iridescent blue-lined Uranotaenia sapphirina, are truly beautiful. All manifest exquisite adaptation to their environment. As an adult, she walks on water as well as land. She flies through the night air with the aid of the stars. She not only sees and smells but also senses heat from a distance. Lacking our kind of a brain, she nevertheless thinks with her skin, changing direction, and fleeing danger in response to myriad changes in her surroundings.
  • [M]osquito control can be a two-edged sword. ...the WNV spraying coincided with the loss of ninety percent of the lobster population, about eleven million lobsters, in the waters of the Long Island Sound. Other crustaceans, such as crabs, and starfish, also died in great numbers. It is likely that the next generation of crustaceans was poisoned as well by insecticides leaching into the sound. For all their apparent differences, lobsters, crabs, starfish, and mosquitoes are all arthropods, and so vulnerable to the same toxins.
    • Phillip M. Tierno Jr., The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter (2001)
  • A swarming and consuming army of 110 trillion enemy mosquitoes patrols every inch of the globe save Antarctica, Iceland, and a handful of French Polynesian micro-islands. The biting female warriors of this droning insect population are armed with at least fifteen lethal and debilitating biological weapons against our 7.7 billion humans deploying suspect and often self-detrimental defensive capabilities. In fact, our defense budget for personal shield, sprays, and other deterrents to stymie her unrelenting raids has a rapidly rising annual revenue of $11 billion. And yet, her deadly offensive campaigns and crimes against humanity continue with reckless abandon. While our counterattacks are reducing the number of annual casualties she perpetrates, the mosquito remains the deadliest hunter of human beings on the planet. Last year she slaughtered only 830,000 people.
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  • Encyclopedic article on Mosquito on Wikipedia
  • The dictionary definition of mosquito on Wiktionary
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