"Buzzz" the mosquito

Visit caches world wide to educate people on the mosquito.

Well, our “Buzzz” is not a typical mosquito thank goodness! The smallest known mosquito has been recorded at 2 mm in length, the largest at around 19 mm. There are however 3,500 species recorded across the world and they have shown little morphological changes since early fossils found in 79-million-year-old Canadian amber from the Cretaceous time.

Another fact to consider is that of all the mosquitoes, not all consume blood and of those species that do, it is only the female that does so. Just imagine what it would be like if both sexes required a blood meal?

The mosquito is a type of fly and thus has a 4-stage lifecycle: egg, larva, pupa and adult or imago. They require water to complete their lifecycle, some can use fresh or salt water and can use as little water as that which collects in a curved leaf. How much more water is there accumulating in man-made containers around town? Depending on temperature, the first 3 stages can complete their cycle in 5-14 days or delay the cycle till next spring if required. A female mosquito can lay 100-200 eggs over a period of weeks and thus producing a population of thousands. Male mosquitoes live about a week while females can live for almost a month, feeding on various hosts and laying quantities of eggs.

Female mosquitoes find their prey using chemical sensors, visual stimuli and heat sensors. As you have probably noticed, if you are in a mosquito area, there seems to be some preferences that attract mosquitoes include those with type O blood, those who are heavy breathers, those with lots of skin bacteria, people with lots of body heat and to some extent those pregnant. The female antenna has at least 72 types of odour receptors, some for carbon dioxide and at least 27 to detect chemicals in perspiration.

Another lucky thing is that mosquitoes do not feed exclusively on humans. Other prey includes: birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, other insects, caterpillars and even fish! Some can even get blood from dead prey. Most feed by piercing the skin and then the prey’s blood pressure forces the blood up into the mosquito. Jokingly, it has been said that if, instead of slapping the mosquito you stretched your skin, you would trap the mouthparts in your bite and the mosquito would burst due to your blood pressure and not being able to pull it’s mouth parts out!

Disease transmission by mosquitoes is a result of the female being able to bite consecutive hosts to lay successive batches of eggs. The first feeding need not be of blood but the next ones do. Diseases associated with mosquitoes include: malaria, yellow fever, West Nile virus, Chikungunya, filariasis, dengue fever, and Zika virus. Various species of mosquitoes are estimated to transmit various types of disease to more than 700 million people annually resulting in at least 2 million deaths.

Control of mosquitoes has varying success, complete eradication probably is not possible nor is it desirable as they are a significant food source for birds, bats, insect larvae, fish, and amphibians. We also do not know what might replace the mosquito, it could be worse!