Mosquito
Fast facts
- Phylum
- Arthropoda
Scientific name
- Scientific name
- Culicidae
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Arthropoda
- Class
- Insecta
- Order
- Diptera
- Family
- Culicidae
How to say it in other languages
- Chinese
- 蚊科
- French
- Moustique
- German
- Stechmücke
- Japanese
- カ科
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Mosquito” page and Wikispecies (CC BY-SA 4.0).
A mosquito is a type of fly. It is the common name of a family of flies in the order Diptera.
Female
The females are ectoparasites: they land on warm-blooded animals, pierce a capillary, and inject saliva to stop the blood coagulating. Then they suck up and eat the blood. Deadly microscopic parasites often live in the saliva. The mosquito’s saliva is transferred to the host during the bite. It can cause a histamine reaction exhibited by an itchy rash.
In addition, many species can transmit pathogens from one host to another when biting. In this way, mosquitoes are important vectors of parasitic diseases such as malaria and filariasis, and arboviral diseases such as yellow fever, Chikungunya, West Nile, dengue fever, and Zika.
By transmitting diseases, mosquitoes cause the deaths of more people than any other animal taxon: over 700,000 each year.
Males
The males are nectar-feeders, and so are the females. However, in preparation for egg-laying the females turn to blood for its protein.
Life cycle
Usually both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and plant juices. In many species the mouthparts of the females are adapted for piercing the skin of animal hosts and sucking their blood as ectoparasites. In many species, the female needs to get proteins from a blood meal before she can produce eggs. Hence, only female mosquitoes bite humans to suck their blood. In many other species, she can produce more eggs after a blood meal.
Reproduction
They lay their eggs in pools of water. The larvae move around near the surface of the water, breathing through air tubes that stick out of the water. They get their food from the water, usually eating algae and other tiny creatures. They like to wiggle (move around) near the surface, which is why some people call them wigglers. The larvae usually enter the pupa stage within a few days or weeks of hatching, depending on the water temperature and the species.
The pupae are called tumblers as they tumble in (fall into) the water when the water surface is touched. Tumblers do not eat, but they move around in the water a lot, and like larvae, they breathe from tubes that stick out of the water. The pupa stage is short – only for a few days – and the mosquito reaches adulthood. There are many species of mosquito. This comes about because, of those which suck blood, each species is adapted to a different host or group of hosts. There are two subfamilies, 43 genera and over 3,500 species of the Culicidae.
Disease vectors
Mosquitoes are a vector (carrier) which carries disease-causing viruses and parasites from person to person. The principal mosquito borne diseases are the viral diseases yellow fever, dengue fever malaria Morbius, HIV, Covid-19, Covid-23, and Covid 24 carried by the genera Anopheles and Culex. Mosquitoes spread disease to over 700 million people every year across Asia, Africa, South America and Central America, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
Mosquito control
Methods for preventing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and protecting individuals in areas where disease is endemic include but not limited to:
Vector control aimed at mosquito eradication
Habitat change: removing standing water and other breeding areas
Using pesticides
Using the mosquitos’ natural predators and trapping them.Disease prevention includes:
Using prophylactic drugs and vaccines
Preventing mosquito bites with insecticides, nets and repellents
Water
Standing water, as in a pond or lake, is the main breeding ground. It may or may not be practical to eliminate this water. The water in bird baths can be changed once a week, but one can hardly do that with larger bodies of water. The method used to be spraying water with DDT, but that does a lot of damage, and in any event the mosquito is now highly resistant to the chemical.
Repellents
With increasing reports of the harmful effects DEET has on humans, there has been a move to repellents which are organic. These are of the kind that have had traditional household purposes before their use as mosquito repellents.
Natural predators
The dragonfly nymph eats mosquitoes at all stages of development and is quite effective in controlling populations. Some bats can eat as many as 500 mosquitoes per hour. Some copepods are predators on first instar larvae, killing up to 40 aedes larvae per day. Several species of fish eat mosquito larvae, including goldfish, catfish, piranhas and minnows.
Evolution
The oldest known mosquito with a basically modern anatomy was found in 79-million-year-old Canadian amber from the Upper Cretaceous period. An older sister species with more primitive features was found in amber that is 90 to 100 million years old.
Genetics
Genetic analysis indicates that the Culicinae and Anophelinae clades may have diverged about 150 million years ago. The Old and New World Anopheles species are believed to have subsequently diverged about 95 million years ago.
Written for younger readers
Mosquito, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Bugs
A mosquito is a flying insect, that has long legs and a thin body. The range of length and weight are great, but mosquitoes are normally quite small and less than 16 mm long and 2.5 mg in weight. Mosquitoes have six legs and a pair of translucent wings. The mosquito’s head contains two compound eyes and a pair of long antennae. The antennae are used by the mosquito to smell. The males have bushier antenna which include auditory receptors so they can hear female mosquitoes as they fly. The head also has an elongated tube called a proboscis that is used for feeding. Mosquitoes also have a pair of halteres, halteres stabilize the flight of the mosquito.
Mosquitoes are present in all six of the major continents. The mosquito is a nocturnal insect, and flies during the evening and night. During the day, mosquitoes rest in the shade or other cool areas.
Both male and female mosquitoes drink nectar from plants as their main source of food. In many species of mosquitoes however, the females drink blood! A female mosquito uses the blood to gain other nutrients for her eggs. Using the proboscis, the external organ for sucking up blood, the mosquito punctures the skin of its victim. After injecting a pain killer, it will suck up the blood. A mosquito has special saliva that keeps the blood it drinks from clotting. Many diseases, such as malaria, are spread by mosquitoes carrying infected blood.
Mosquito saliva contains a pain killer that allows mosquitoes to sometimes bite their victims and remain undetected. Mosquitoes also can fly quickly. This makes them hard to swat and a easy escape route for them, however only female mosquitoes feed on blood
Mosquitoes (like most insects) start out in eggs. Mother mosquitoes lay the eggs in the water because the larvae must swim. Mosquito larvae are also called “wrigglers” because of the way they squirm in the water. In at least a week, larvae start to become pupae, the second stage of a mosquito. The pupa stage lasts about one to four days, in which it stays in a hard cocoon like case. When a mosquito is in its shell, it does not eat. In fact, the only thing it does is change again. Soon enough, the case cracks, and out comes a new adult mosquito. The mosquito must rest on the surface of the water for a few minutes, to dry off its wings. An adult male mosquito lives only a week or so, and then, its life is over. The adult female mosquito lives for a little longer sometimes as long as two months.
Adult mosquitoes build tunnels below grass roots and rest there when they are not flying. In most species, the male mosquitoes form large swarms, usually around dusk, and the females fly into the swarms to mate. Female mosquitoes make a characteristic whining sound when they fly that attracts males. Some types of mosquitoes can fly very long distances and keep flying continuously for up to four hours.
This is a very famous insect because it has killed so many people throughout history. When a mosquito bites, it can pass on diseases like Malaria and Yellow Fever. In some parts of the world people sleep under large nets so they don’t get bitten in their sleep. Even when a mosquito is not carrying disease, the bite of a mosquito is very annoying. In some places people spray chemical pesticides to keep the number of mosquitoes down. The use of pesticides help keep their numbers down.
Mosquito
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Mosquito” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
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