Mosquitoes: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em

Paris — Mozzies. Skeeters. Stingers. Whatever you call them, mosquitoes don’t get much love from our species.

And why should they? The buzzing bloodsuckers make us miserable and sick, and would appear to be devoid of any redeeming qualities.

But they are pretty amazing. Mosquitoes, let it be said, are…

…PRIMEVAL AND DEADLY
Mosquitoes were annoying velociraptors and stegosauruses long before a giant meteor wiped out the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. The oldest confirmed mozzie fossil is nearly 100-million years old.

Our nagging nemesis is also the most lethal creature in the world, responsible for more than a million human deaths every year, mostly children.

The Anopheles genus carries malaria, which killed some 600,000 people in 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

It also causes painful and sometimes deadly ringworm in dogs, and gathers in swarms thick enough to choke a caribou.

Members of the Aedes genus, meanwhile, spread yellow fever, West Nile virus, dengue, chikungunya, and the Zika virus, which scientists recently confirmed causes severe malformations of fetus brains. Others provoke various strains of encephalitis.

There are some 3,500 species in all.

…INVASIVE AND NOMADIC
They are everywhere except Antarctica. With a little help from us, mosquitoes are also highly mobile.

Hitching rides in luggage, cars, cargo ships and planes, many species have spread across the planet thanks to globalization.

Old tires and “lucky bamboo” plants are two of their favorite modes of transportation.

One species, Aedes albopictus, has colonized 20 countries in Europe in just the last 25 years, an expansion said to have been helped by global warming.

But skeeters don’t move unless they have to.

“If you live next to a place where you are breeding mosquitoes, then they will not go two kilometers to find a blood meal, they will go 10 meters from the breeding place to you,” explains Eskild Petersen, a professor of tropical diseases at Aarhus University in Denmark.

They have a short travel span of a few hundred meters, and a lifespan of about two weeks.

And while their wings beat up to 500 times per second, mosquitoes only fly at speeds of about two kilometers per hour.

Salt marsh mosquitoes, however, can voyage up to 170 kilometers from their larval breeding ground in search of a meal.

…SEXUALLY DIMORPHOUS
Which means that males and females are different. Very different.

Only the female — in search of protein for her eggs — consumes blood. Her sometimes virus-infected saliva contains an anti-coagulant to keep things flowing in both directions through her needle-like proboscis.   

Males, meanwhile, are vegans, and only sip flower nectar. Whether that is why they only live half as long is unclear.

…USEFUL
“Whatever else they are, mosquitoes have their place in ecosystems,” Fabrice Chandre, an expert on insect vectors at the Research Institute for Development in Montpellier, says somewhat grudgingly.

As water-bound larvae, mosquitoes are filter feeders that consume single-cell algae, and are in turn a favored food for fish.

As adults, they are tasty snacks for birds, bats and spiders. Weighing in at two to 10 milligrams it takes a lot to make a meal. But then again, there are a lot of mosquitoes in the world.

Male mosquitoes are important plant pollinators.

…AND INDESTRUCTIBLE
Since the invention of the insecticide DDT in 1939, humans have been trying to wipe mozzies off the face of the Earth. But the insects get used to every new generation of poison, rebounding stronger than ever.

“We simply can’t eradicate mosquitoes,” says Anna-Bella Failloux, an entomologist and mosquito expert at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying. — AFP