Athens Breeding "Super Mosquitoes"

Chemisor writes "Air pollution and cramped housing conditions in Athens, Greece, are creating a new breed of mosquitoes which are bigger, faster, and can smell humans from farther away. The super insects have color vision and detect humans from 25-30 meters, which is about 50% farther than the ordinary mosquitoe. Beating their wing 500 times a second provides them with extra speed, and the larger bodies (by 0.3ug) presumably allow larger bloodsucking capacity." And in a similar vein (har har) New Scientist had a piece about what mosquitoes like or hate about people.

Color vision

[BWJones]

Regular mosquito species are dichromats. In other words, all mosquitos, like many insects that I know of have color vision. Some insects like bees are actually trichromats (like humans), but have their photopigments tuned higher up in the spectrum. So, super mosquitos having color vision is no different than regular mosquitos, unless they have developed a third chromophore which the article does not state.

Re:"Mosquitoe"?

[BWJones]

Did Dan Quayle write this summary?

As much as I would like to make fun of Quayle, mosquitoe is the British spelling much like colour is the British spelling of color.

Re:simple solution...

[hal9000(jr)]

...live in the city. The air quality is so bad here I'd be amazed if any mosquitoe could survive long term.

Helloooooo? Athens is a city [google.com] .

Extra bit

[Lave]

A crucial point I forgot to mention in the above is that this allows them to better compete with the rest of their species - the larger, faster, "better" mossies will be able to bread more often than the "ordinary" mossies - and the increased amount of food supports them in that aim.

The better vision allows you to see more chicks to impregnate.

Just because you can't immediately see why evolution would lead to something - doesn't mean that it won't happen - it just means your not looking at the situation right.

Mod parent down Re:"Mosquitoe"?

[middlemen]

Hi The spelling of mosquito in English is "mosquito" and not "mosquitoe".

Re:Great,,,

[Freiheit]

If you'd read the article, they aren'te creating mosquito's, the mosquito's are evolving into different form that has better traits for surviving. It's not a research project or a planned thing. It's naturally happening.

Re:Someone should shoot them...

[Billosaur]

so try a old tech solution. get a block of dry ice, throw it in a cooler and put the cooler in the back corner of your yard.

Or since this is Slashdot, maybe a more high-tech colution [scapest.com].

Re:Patents...

[Abcd1234]

or swords out of damascus steel (or buildings out of it for that matter).

Actually, I believe that particular puzzle has been solved [ntsource.com].

Re:Three Magic Letters!

[jesterpilot]

Indeed, DDT has proven to be very effective for breeding strong, highly resistant mosquitoes.

Re:Belize

[treeves]

It sounds like maybe you saw crane flies or another species, not mosquitoes. We have crane flies here in the Pacific NW. They look like giant mosquitoes, but they actually eat mosquitoes.

Re:'Compares favorably' to DEET?

[AsciiNaut]

Bad luck. It has been shown that nothing is more effective for longer periods than DEET, but you must cover every exposed area as mosquitoes will still go for DEET-free islands in a sea of DEET. It's well worth reading Fradin and Day's 2002 NEJM review (PDF) of repellents [nynjtc.org].

The mosquitos in Athens might be becoming bigger and meaner, but you probably won't catch anything off them other than an annoying itch. However, if visiting tropical areas (or (possibly) NYC), it is essential to avoid mosquito-borne disease. Therefore, as well as covering up and DEETing as recommended as far as is feasible in the daytime, you should (i) bring, and use without fail, a mosquito net every night; (ii) take effective malaria prophylaxis. (Malaria is always unpleasant and frequently fatal: other such diseases (like dengue) can't be treated at all, so preventing bites is an important strategy.) Homeopathic "remedies" don't work. Consult a qualified physician before setting off.

Re:Color vision

[Oligonicella]

Don't short-change insects, some have six or so.

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/208/4/6 87 [biologists.org]

"For instance, papilionid butterflies have six opsins, one UV, one blue and four LW..."

FYI SW, MW and LW are "short wavelength (SW, 300-400 nm), middle wavelength (MW, 400-500 nm) and long wavelength (LW, 500-600 nm)" - same source.

For info, bees are UV,green,blue.

Bats, Natures Mosquito Control device

[brufar]

Looks like Athens should be working on increasing their bat population. a single little brown bat such as we have here in the US can catch about 1200 small insects (such as mosquito's) in a single hour. I have built several bat houses to place around my yard to try and increase their population in my local vicinity. and decrease the biting insect population . It will make the back yard a much more enjoyable place and I won't have to spend money on chemicals, propane or electricity to make it happen.

I am convinced that although the electric bug zappers take out a lot of insects, and can be enjoyable to watch, they also seem to attract all the bugs from your neighbors yards into yours..

For more info on Bat conservation and plans to build your own bat house check out Bat Conservation International [batcon.org]

From the BatCon FAQ

Most bats are valuable allies, well worth protecting. Worldwide, they are primary predators of vast numbers of insect pests that cost farmers and foresters billions of dollars annually and spread human disease. In the United States, little brown bats often eat mosquitos and can catch up to 1,200 tiny insects in an hour. An average-sized colony of big brown bats can eat enough cucumber beetles to protect farmers from tens of millions of the beetle's rootworm larva each summer. Large colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats eat hundreds of tons of moth pests weekly. Bats play key roles in keeping a wide variety of insect populations in balance. Yet, they rank as North America's most rapidly declining and endangered land mammals. The largest known cause of decline is exaggerated human fear and persecution.

Re:Minnesota State Bird

[LordVader717]

Is it wrong to want the extermination of one little species?

Correction: About 3500 different species of the family Culicidae.

Dragonflies in these parts...

[Civil_Disobedient]

In Maine, we have our own brand of bio-terrorism against the Devil-creatures: dragonflies. The state used to provide homeowners with a batch in the late spring so that by summertime you'd have a glorious army of ravenous winged assasins. I read somewhere that dragonflies eat 20x their body weight in mosquitos a day (no ref., sorry).

Re:Natural Resistance to Venom?

[FellowConspirator]

Mosquitos do not have venom. When a mosquito bites, you are exposed to proteins in the saliva of the insect -- some of which have a mild anti-coagulant effect. The itching and raising of a small bump is the result of an immune response to the foreign protein. As such, you'd expect that on the first exposure (your very first bite), there'd be minimal response, then subsequent bites would produce the itchy bumps most people associate with a bite. As with allergy shots, frequent exposure to the same proteins will lessen or eliminate the effect over time -- though how long the state persists will vary from person to person.

People that are immuno-suppressed whether by drug or disease would also be expected to have reduced response to mosquito bites.

Further, if your body has acclimated to the proteins in the mosquito's bite, it is quite possible that you'll find that when you travel you might respond to the bites of other species of mosquito that might have different/variant compositions to their saliva.

Re:Three Magic Letters!

[FrostedChaos]

That sounds like a great way to:

1. Breed DDT-resistant mosquitos
2. Contaminate the groundwater for generations, leading to
  3. Retarded children and children with other developmental disabilities
  4. Massive environmental damage, especially massive bird die-off

It's amazing how many great ideas you can have when you stop believing those so-called "scientists" and "researchers"

DDT is safe "when used as directed"

[Anonymous Coward]

the normally left wing NY Times

If the New York Times looks "left" to you, you are pretty far off the deep end of the "right". The NYT is a typical "all the news that sells" populist American rag, only fatter and with artistic pretensions.

I read your links, and they contain numerous factual inaccuracies based on neo-nazi anti-environmentalist memes.

1) The USA banned DDT. No, we didn't, you can buy it today, and anyone who says you can't is flat-out lying. The USA banned DDT for agricultural use, which is quite reasonable since that use causes DDT-resistant pests to evolve very rapidly. DDT should be used for targeted pest control - and it still is, except in the many areas worldwide where agricultural use has destroyed its effectiveness.

2) Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" is the root of all evil and contains lies. No, the book contained some science that has since been disproved, but it's main message - that pesticides should not be used with a "more is better" philosophy, and that use of chemicals should be regulated when a global commons can be damaged - is still relevant. To quote Carson's book directly, "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity.'"

3) People are dying of malaria because the US banned DDT at Rachel Carsons' instigation. No, people are dying of malaria because DDT was used indiscriminately and now there are DDT-resistant malaria mosquitoes. There are other pesticides that have the same problem - because knuckleheads overused them agriculturally they are now useless for disease vector control. This is not a consequence of environmentalism - remember, environmentalists like organic agriculture!

People who tell you this shit just want to recruit more mindless drones for their army of environmental destruction. Their end goal is the elimination of all commons, particularly air and water , which they believe should be owned and not shared .

Read wikipedia's article on DDT if you want to know both sides of the story. But if you go in assuming "environmentalism is evil" or "corporations are evil" you have already given up your objectivity.

Re:Three Magic Letters!

[FrostedChaos]

I believe that nearly _ALL_ chemicals can cause harm to fetuses.

Well, you're wrong about that.

DDT should be a community-selected issue. If you're dealing with massive mosquito-borne diseases, there is a CBA that should be performed to see if the benefits outweigh the costs.

DDT use cannot be a community-selected issue because the environment is common to all.
Water runoff from one community flows into another community, seeps into aquifers that feed wells, drains into the ocean.

This seems to be a typical blind spot for "libertarians," even the smarter ones. The. Environment. Can't. Be. Privatized.

The issue is a lot more complicated than either of us can debate in this forum, but I believe the issues must be brought back up.

The issues have been brought up. Well, all of them except for the issue of how this chemical ravages the natural world.
I brought that up in another post, but I doubt anyone will address it, because there's so many other reasons why using DDT is a manifestly stupid idea.

If you wanted to bring up the issue of environmentalism vs. utilitarianism, you could have easily picked a better issue. For example, is it moral for governments to drain swamps, and destroy the indiginous creatures living there, in order to reduce fatalities from malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases? Instead, you picked an issue where the harm to the public is obvious.

Yet we can't use DDT in much of the world, and I believe that is a bigger problem that was created by fiat and mandate than by research and reality.

Yes, I'm so sad that the government banned a chemical that was wiping out entire species of birds, causing retardation, and contaminating the groundwater. Private industry and selfishness would have solved the problem so much better. "More of this terrible gibberish," to borrow a phrase from Hunter S. Thompson. Man, I wonder what would have happened if he had been locked in a room with Ann Coulter for a few hours. I guess the world will never know.

Re:Or, we could just use DDT and there's no proble

[TubeSteak]

The big problem with DDT was its use in agriculture.

Farmers were using shiatloads of DDT on their fields.
Literally kilograms of the stuff per acre.
Rain + Field = DDT Runoff

DDT, in the quantities used in/around the home, is not terribly harmful.

Unfortunately, the hysteria over DDT gave it such a bad reputation that nobody will pay for it to be used at all, despite the fact that the ban is only on agricultural use.

physical changes

[White Yeti]

Reaction probably varies from person to person, since some people in this study [npr.org] of poison ivy became more sensitive with repeated exposure.

Personally, I'd squish the buggers anyway, rather than let them reproduce.

Re:Minnesota State Bird

[PhotoGuy]

snip propane to (via a catalytic process) produce CO2 and heat /snip
Also know as burning propane.

It actually uses platinum beads to oxidize the propane without a flame. Maybe someone with some greater chemistry background can expand upon that... It's not like a BBQ, by any means...

Re:"Mosquitoe"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Poppycock and balderdash. Mosquito is the british spelling of mosquito. Tomato is the british spelling of tomato. Tomatoes is the british plural (plural: a variant of a word you use for "more than one" of something) of tomato. Mosquitoes is the british plural of mosquito. Toe, however is the british spelling of toe, and toes is the british plural of toe. Damn inconsistent brits.

Re:Dragonflies in these parts...

[dfjghsk]

wasn't able to find information on dragonflys.. but 20x it's body weight is possible:

http://www.discover.com/issues/mar-02/departments/ featreviews/ [discover.com]

A two-week-old sea horse can consume 3,600 baby shrimps in one dayup to 25 times its body weight.

http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/detail.aspx?id=1205 [unr.edu]

When a mosquito sucks blood from a human, it will take in twice its body weight in blood. To decrease this added weight, the mosquito urinates on its victim to release fluids.

According to this: http://www.ponddoc.com/WhatsUpDoc/WildLife/BuzzMos quitoes.htm [ponddoc.com] dragonflys can eat up to 600 mosquitos a day.. so if you can find the weight of a dragonfly and a mosquito......