It's Mosquito Season

The snow mosquitoes or mosquito training wheels, as they are sometimes called, have already emerged this season. Derek Sikes, Professor of Entomology and Curator of Insects at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum of the North says there are more than five species in the Culiseta (CUE-leh-see-tah) genus. They are big, slow, and less numerous than those emerging later, but they will still try to get a blood snack.

“These Culiseta spend their whole winter as adults so that’s why we see them so early when there’s still some snow on the ground.”

Sikes says it’s difficult to predict if it will be a bad mosquito year. The general rule of thumb is that more rain will mean more mosquitoes. Standing water must be free of predators and competition and a tiny puddle can host mosquito larvae. Rain is not always a good predictor of a bad mosquito season. 

“An interesting study a number of years back found a relationship between droughts and mosquitoes. When there is a drought year, when there is very little rain and temporary water bodies dry up, the following year when the rains return, you get an unusual explosion of mosquitoes because all those little temporary water bodies have not only cleaned of their mosquitoes, but all the predators and competitors of the mosquitoes. So when they return, they return to a predator-free environment, which allows them to have a population explosion.”

Spraying for mosquitoes will not only kill the mosquitoes, but also their predators. Sikes says the mosquitoes will be worse the following year after spraying because the biodiversity will become skewed. He recommends mosquito magnets, the traps that run on carbon dioxide. Only mosquitoes are pulled into the traps. Sikes says head nets and long sleeves are preferred over repellents.

Alaskan mosquitoes don’t transmit diseases to people or pets. Sikes says Alaska is the only place in the U.S. that is true. He says climate change might have an impact on that if species from the lower 48 begin to survive in Alaska.