By Cindy Mulla, Public Relations & Education, Beach Mosquito Control District
Well, to be honest with you, the mosquitoes have been present all winter long. What!?
Even if you live in an area where there are months of extreme weather conditions such as deep freeze or drought, mosquitoes persist. Insects like mosquitoes have amazing strategic adaptation methods that help them survive even the harshest of weather conditions. There are four stages in the mosquito life cycle: egg, larva, pupa, and adult, and the first three stages are water-dependent. Only three parts of their life cycle can survive winter successfully. The name of this significant metabolic reduction of growth is diapause. It is a temporary suspension of development or dormancy from one stage to the next and triggered by environmental factors such as temperature, amount of daylight and stress on the insect.
As fall arrives, only a select few species of adult females will go into diapause. These mosquitoes will search for a damp, warm location like a sewer, basement, barn, or hollow log to rest and use their stored fat for energy. Even gravid mosquitoes with eggs will survive. Male mosquitoes will not go into diapause and will die off. Remember, it is only the female that bites and takes a bloodmeal. She uses the protein from the blood meal to develop her eggs. From just one drop of blood, each female mosquito can produce a clutch of 250 to 300 eggs at once and can lay twice during its lifetime. Certain genera of mosquitoes will lay their eggs individually, in smaller batches, in multiple locations, and these can survive up to a maximum of two years. The aquatic larval stage will also enter diapause to survive. During this stage, the larvae’s metabolic rate, which includes heart rate and respiration, will slow down, stopping further development. Their food source will come from stored nutrients. As soon as environmental temperatures rise, and days become longer, these three stages of development will resume as normal. Temperature is a key factor for controlling the rate of development for mosquitoes. The higher the water temperature is, the quicker the development turnaround time is from egg to adult.
Not to gross you out but… Did you know that when she stealthily bites you, she must first inject her saliva into your body to function as an anticoagulant so she can successfully take a blood meal from you? Yuck! Before you realize it, there is a raised, red, and itchy bump. This is an allergic reaction to her saliva. How nasty!
No matter what blood type you are A, B, or O, positive or negative, she will still find you! She prefers a warm blood meal and can sense body temperature. She loves stinky smells. This little vampire certainly is attracted to sweat (It contains lactic acid that makes us all smell unpleasant), the scent of the bacteria on your skin and especially the moist carbon dioxide we exhale too. Unfortunately, we cannot win! She also loves sweet smells like perfumes, colognes, and deodorants. She is a tiny pollinator, loves nectar from flowers and gets her energy from carbohydrates.
Please, take precautions to avoid being bitten by the female mosquito. She is the queen for being the most dangerous living creature on earth due to the life-threatening diseases she can transmit. Only infectious females can transmit disease when they bite. Viruses found in Florida include Chikungunya (CHIKv), Dengue (DENv), Zika, Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEEv), St. Louis Encephalitis (SLEv), and West Nile Virus (WNV). Chikungunya, Dengue and Zika are traditionally imported infections with possible local transmissions that can occur. All can be transmitted to humans. There are no preventive vaccines available for humans. It can take from 2 to 15 days after receiving a bite from an infected mosquito for illness symptoms to appear. They usually mimic flu symptoms such as fatigue, fever, headache, dizziness, muscle weakness, joint pain, or a rash. If you or anyone you know is experiencing these symptoms, please seek medical treatment promptly. A physician can order a laboratory test to determine if the illness is caused by an arbovirus (a virus transmitted by an insect or tick). However, most people infected with an arbovirus do not even become ill.
Regardless, please always take preventive steps against the bite of the female mosquito. Wearing light colors will help because it is much easier for her to see darker colors due to her eyesight. When outdoors, always use an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved registered product and follow the label instructions. The smell of the repellent confuses her sent receptors located on the antennae and throws her off our natural attractants. Try to stay indoors during dusk and dawn hours. These times are the active peak mosquito transition feeding times and especially for the key mosquito species that are notorious for transmitting disease. It is also especially important to get rid of all standing water on your property to eliminate mosquito breeding sites. If you have exhausted all your strategies and are still having mosquito problems and live in the Panama City Beach area, contact Beach Mosquito Control District. We encourage you to contact us. We will inspect, treat, and share preventive strategies with no additional cost. Your annual tax dollars cover the cost of our services. We determine our larger area treatments by the number of service requests we receive from the citizens, and the number and specific species we catch in our surveillance traps. Communication is key. We do not know how bad the mosquitoes are on your property unless you contact us. We are here to serve you. Please place a customer service request by phone at (850) 233-5030 or online at www.pcbeachmosquito.org.
RSS
