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Mosquitoes
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Mosquito FAQ
Can mosquitoes transmit the AIDS virus?
Where do mosquitoes go in the winter?
How do mosquitoes transmit diseases?
Can mosquitoes transmit the AIDS virus?
The short answer is "NO". Studies with HIV clearly show that the virus responsible for the AIDS infection is regarded as food to the mosquito and is digested along with the blood meal.
Mosquitoes do not ingest enough HIV particles to transmit AIDS by contamination. An AIDS-free individual would have to be bitten by 10 million mosquitoes that had begun feeding on an AIDS carrier to receive a single unit of HIV from contaminated mosquito mouthparts.
Most people have heard that mosquitoes regurgitate saliva before they feed, but are unaware that the food canal and salivary canal are separate passageways in the mosquito. The mosquito's feeding apparatus is an extremely complicated structure that is totally unlike the crude single-bore syringe. Unlike a syringe, the mosquito delivers salivary fluid through one passage and draws blood up another. As a result, the food canal is not flushed out like a used needle, and blood flow is always unidirectional. The mechanics involved in mosquito feeding are totally unlike the mechanisms employed by the drug user's needles. In short, mosquitoes are not flying hypodermic needles and a mosquito that disgorges saliva into your body is not flushing out the remnants of its last blood meal.
(from Rutgers Cooperative Extension Fact Sheet # FS736)
Where do mosquitoes go in the winter?
Mosquitoes, like most insects, are cold blooded creatures. As a result, they are incapable of regulating body heat and their temperature is essentially the same as their surroundings. Mosquitoes function best at 80o F, become lethargic at 60o F and cannot function below 50o F. In tropical areas, mosquitoes are active year round. In temperate climates, adult mosquitoes become inactive with the onset of cool weather and enter hibernation to live through the winter.
Some kinds of mosquitoes have winter-hardy eggs and hibernate as embryos in eggs laid by the last generation of females in late summer. The eggs are usually submerged under ice and hatch in spring when water temperatures rise. Other kinds of mosquitoes overwinter as adult females that mate in the fall, enter hibernation in animal burrows, hollow logs or basements and pass the winter in a state of torpor. In spring, the females emerge from hibernation, blood feed and lay the eggs that produce the next generation of adults. A limited number of mosquitoes overwinter in the larval stage, often buried in the mud of freshwater swamps. When temperatures rise in spring, these mosquitoes begin feeding, complete their immature growth and eventually emerge as adults to continue their kind.
How do mosquitoes transmit diseases?
Any insect that feeds on blood has the potential of transmitting disease organisms from human to human. Mosquitoes are highly developed blood-sucking insects and are the most formidable transmitters of disease in the animal kingdom. Mosquito-borne diseases are caused by human parasites that have a stage in their life cycle that enters the blood stream. The female mosquito picks up the blood stage of the parasite when she imbibes blood to develop her eggs. The parasites generally use the mosquito to complete a portion of their own life cycle and either multiply, change in form inside the mosquito or do both. After the mosquito lays her eggs, she seeks a second blood meal and transmits the fully developed parasites to the next unwitting host.
Malaria is a parasitic protozoan that infects the blood cells of humans and is transmitted from one human to the next by Anopheles mosquitoes. Encephalitis is a virus of the central nervous system that is passed from infected birds to humans by mosquitoes that accept birds as blood meal hosts in addition to humans. Yellow fever is a virus infection of monkeys that can either be transmitted from monkey to human or from human to human in tropical areas of the world.
Dog heartworm is a large filarial worm that lives in the heart of dogs but produces a blood stage small enough to develop in a mosquito. The dog heartworm parasite does not develop properly in humans and is not regarded as a human health problem. A closely related parasite, however, produces human elephantiasis in some tropical areas of the world, a debilitating mosquito-borne affliction that results in grossly swollen arms legs and genitals.