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You see Pocush Energy dot E for full ties and cs. Oh hey, it's the day drunk lady who loves your perfume. Ali word back with the episode. You don't want to want, but you know that you need it. You're just itching for it. Listen a few things I know about you, all right? You hate mosquitoes. You want to try to appreciate literally one thing about them if you can. Also,
you want to kill them. We got you, so I have waited four years to have this very specific guest on ever since we had her on the Black af and Stem episode in the year of our Lockdown twenty twenty, let's reave it in.
Did you know that mosquito is Spanish for little fly?
So despite my nudging and begging her every spring to talk mosquitoes, she has been a bit tied up becoming doctor Masse and is now working in a postdoc for the US Centers for Disease Control. For years, I've been like, whenever you're ready, I have two mics. I got a million questions. That time is now, which we will get to. But first, just quick thanks to everyone who sends those questions in Via patreon dot com slash ologies, you can become a patron for as Lola as about a month.
Thank you to everyone out there getting bitten in our ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com, where we have also a tick shirt that boldly reads check your crevices. We also have some suits you can put on your body. Thank you to everyone who is listening to our spin off show, Asmologies, which just a few weeks ago launched as its own show in its own feed. Look for this colorful new logo with a bird and a frog. That show Smologies is in your podcast app or at
the link in the show notes. They're shorter entirely Kids save classroom friendly episodes. Also thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for this show, ologies, which I read all of just hungrily, including this recent one from Jane and Monica, who listened to the secret at the end of a recent episode and said that my having at least seven friendly spiders in my office has inspired them, has inspired, has inspired them to inch toward getting over a fear
of spiders. And they were able to walk past one. And this feat was so giant that it moved them to tears. JANEA Monic, I bet that spider is even happier than you are, or I am so well done. Okay. Calciology it's a real word. It first appeared in the book review of a tomb titled Mosquitoes of New York in nineteen seventy nine, and the reviewer noted that Mosquitoes of New York is a great contribution to Colcidology and will stand as a frequently cited reference for years to come.
Look at that right now, forty four years later, I'm citing that citation. So calcidology. It's the study of mosquitoes. The word comes from the Latin for midge. Their tiny cousins. And because you had so many very valid questions, this episode went very long. It turned from an adybitty single to a beast. So this first part in it, you'll become familiar with your sworn enemy, learning how they work, what they eat. You'll appreciate their beauty, trust me, their complexity,
their cunning, and their strategy and the history. And then next week we're going to tell you how to stop them from feasting on your exposed parts. So get ready
right now to learn about them. You're going to fill your ears with facts about high pitched sexy buzzing, their wings of wonder, what is happening with their hell mounts, Why it's vital to study them, why they are scarier than shark, where they make their babies in your yard, Why this skeeter field needs bug nerds, Why these hungry bitches want your blood in the first place, why you
get bitten more than your friends? And next week what to do about all that with medical entomologists Mosquito expert and appreciate and colcidologist doctor Fallon wear Gilmore.
Finally, I love her.
Him. My name is Valli ur Gilmore, and I used to pronounce she her.
How exciting is this for me? By the way, this is very exciting for me.
I'm excited to finally be on here. I felt like we went through like a whole roller coaster of like defend my PhD, move to Puerto Rico, and then completely forgot about what was going on.
So you your doctor wear gilmore now, Yeah.
It's wild. Yeah. I finished up live PhD last year. I just I saw a Facebook Memories post and it was like me getting I had just picked up my cap and gown today, which is truly wild.
How exciting? I mean, I have been just kind of waiting in the mosquito wings for timing to be right for you. And now you're working with the CDC. Can you tell me a little bit about what the last year has been like for you.
Yeah, So I defended my PhD in February, and then that July I started in a program called the Epidemic Intelligence Service And so this is a fellowship program with the CDC globally recognized like was my dream position for its investigative and emergency response efforts.
So again, eis is the United States Epidemic Intelligence Service? Did you know that existed? Neither did I it's a two year post doc after PhD program for people in the health industry to do applied epidemiology. And if you're accepted into the Epidemic Intelligence Service Program, you're training under CDC mentors. You're helping protect people all over the globe
from some emerging and existing diseases. Also, it may involve a one way plane ticket for those who love adventure or hate their hometowns.
We're sent out where we are needed globally for healthcare and public health support. So I am assigned to the Puerto Rico Department of Health and it's been great. The process for getting here was a little bit bumpy, but being able to live in Puerto Rico and really immerse myself in the culture and interact with the people has been very eye opening and just a great experience overall.
And then do you know where you might go after that or is it really kind of outbreak dependent or lab dependent.
It's honestly dependent. You know. Ideally, some officers stay with CDC, some officers stay with the Department of Health, but you also have officers that go to farm, they go to other industries, maybe they go back to clinical work. So it really just depends on what is available at the time and what might catch my interests.
And you mentioned something about this being a dream for you. How long have you wanted to work in mosquitoes or epidemiology or field work, Like, how long has this kind of been like on your vision board.
Yeah, so I'm gonna be honest. I started out undergrad as a marine biology major and that just wasn't for me.
Oh, thank you, what about it? Do you get seasick? No?
So we went. It was an ecology trip and we were in like a salt marsh, and I just was like, I don't think I can do this long term. I was freaking out. I got so stuck in the mud that my shoes got lost. So I continued walking on the salt marsh without any shoes. And I went to my supervisor the next week and I said, I think I need to change my major. And so it was wild because I feel like I grew up and I was like, I want to work with wells and dolphins.
And then I was like, I think I'll do environmental science. And so I took up environmental science and I had the opportunity to do some internships that were entomology focused, so studying insects, and many of those were agriculture focused, so working on honeybees. But then I also did some work with wolf spiders. Yeah, that was a fun internship.
I was awesome.
I never thought about I never thought I would work with spiders or be okay with it. My mom was not okay with it.
But are you pretty okay with spiders? Now?
I love them. I actually had a pet tarantula. Her name was Rosie. She passed away a few years ago, but she was the first spider first a racknent that I got after my internship. So they're they're cued up close. What was.
What species was she?
She was a rosehair tarantula.
That's what I figured. I was like a pink toad or a rose hair.
Yeah, she was so cute.
Oh she's the cutest thing.
So you were working in entomology and you're digging spiders, and then how did did you get the bug bug?
I did? I was like at that point, I was doing environmental toxicology and science, and for me it was like this was a public health service. So I was looking working with aquatic microorganisms to see how they could be indicators for stream and pond health, and I was like, there's got to be a way that I can combine my interest of public health but also of entomology. And I learned at a conference that I could do that through medical entomology. And so my friend Shelley.
White Kid, thanks again.
Jerlie was the one who introduced me to medical entomology at the Tropical Medicine Conference ASTMH. And when I got home for conference, I googled it, I looked it all up. I was like, this is what I want to do, and I applied for labs that had a medical entomology focus. Most of them were focusing on mosquito born diseases and that's how I got into it, and I fell in
love with it from day one. It's truly just they're such small little critters, but they're so complicated and I think the roles that they have in our ecosystem is very interesting. And they're they're beautiful up close, like I know, you know, most people would be like mosquitoes are ugly, but under a microscope they're shiny, they're sparkly, like they're beautiful, The scales are lovely.
More on mosquito glamour and miniature looks served in a moment. I trust you on that. I love that you went from literally whales to mosquitoes, like just kept narrowing down your field until you got to like a teeny tiny but very important insect. I mean, people have said that when it comes to teeny tiny mosquitos, and I don't know if this is flim flam or not, but that they are the most dangerous animal to humans. Is that true?
Or are hippos? Where are they? How much impact do mosquitoes have on us?
So I think, you know, I've also seen this paper that was kind of ranking animals as most deadly, and you would think, like off the cusp, that it would be lions, or maybe tigers, hippos, frightening or bears, but they actually are mosquitoes. And not only are they a nuisance, but they've been known to be able to carry a lot of these stabilitating diseases such as malaria and dingay and less nile, you know, and also at the end of the day, mosquitoes have killed more people than any
other creature in the world. Even today, almost one million people die a year from some type of mosquito born disease. So it is not the mosquito itself, but it is the pathaging or the viruses and the parasites that they can transmit that are very deadly, but you kind of it's a package deal at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, a million people a year according to various compiled sources. The roundabout figure for human mortalities by mosquitos is roughly a million people a year. Now. Also high on the list of animals that could kill you, you right for this, freshwater snails, also sandflies. They each transmit some parasite friends of their own. But yeah, first on the list by a lot is mosquitos at a million a year, with over two hundred million mosquito spread cases of malaria a year.
Most of the malaria deaths occur in little kiddos under the age of five, and it's on the rise. So yes, it is correct that mosquitoes kill more people on Earth in one day than sharks have in the last century. Sharks are like, get off my jock, leave me alone. I like fish. But between the mosquitoes and the snails lies the number two animal risk to human beings. What animal kills us less than mosquitoes, but more than snails, Lions,
is it hippos, Is it raccoons with rabies? No, the number two animal caused mortality on Earth coming in it over half a million deaths per year. It's caused by one species. It's a species of ape Homo sapiens. It's you. So in terms of what animal can kill you again, first mosquito. Secondly a warlord or someone who's striving and texting, or maybe a person you work with who has sold firearms like it was a cell phone. Well, getting back to the mosquitoes themselves, who are apparently just kind of
wrong place, wrong time. Really, you said they were beautiful and shiny and shimmery. Can you explain to me what it looks like when you're looking at a mosquito through a microscope, and like, what power of microscopes you need to appreciate mosquitoes in that way.
Yeah, So I was spoilt during my graduate career because our lab had these very nice microscopes, and I think the expensive, high quality ones. So imagine we're at a microscope and we have this peatrie dish and we have these mosquitos that have been dried down or they've been knocked down with ice to kind of keep them from moving, and so at first glance, they just like look like little black flies with long legs. They're kind of like gangly,
kind of like the jack skeleton of the flies. And so when you look at them close, like mosquitos are actually distinguished by their long, slender legs in this thin body, but they also have these specialized piercing mouth parts that allow them to feed off of invertebrates and vertebrates.
Tall lanky legs for days, and bloodthirsty mouths made of racers. Jack Skellington meets anemic nineties supermodel meets Edward scissor Mouth meets a horny vampire.
In addition to that, you'll see these shiny scales, and so in my head, I'm thinking about eighties ejip dye because that is a vector or a mosquito species eye work on and you'll see scales on the wings. You'll also see scales along the body in different colors like white and silver, and so that banding is what really stands out when you first see them under the microscope.
And are those scales kind of like butterfly scales.
So they're similar in the sense that it actually they're actually very similar depending on the mosquito species, the patterns are different and they might not be as shiny as they are for safe for like butterflies, But for some mosquito species, we do see shinier scales, which I guess you could also think of them as fur as an easier way to approach it.
Is that why some look like tiger striped and some have like almost bumblebee stripes.
Yeah, that's the coloration pattern of their scales, And so eighties a chift I has like those white scales that banding around its body and around its leg.
Why are they so fancy?
Yeah, and there's also there are fancier mosquitos like eighties Egypti is just one off of the top of my head. But there are like mosquito species that have blue like sapphire color scales basically and paddles on their leg which we think might be used for mating as a mating signal to females.
Hello, ladies, I didn't know that there were sapphire glittery ones like that.
Yeah, it's it's called Savethi cyanaces. So it's a mosquito we commonly see in Central and South America. But if you look it up. I personally wouldn't name it the peacock mosquito, but it is a If someone had was like, I don't think mosquitoes are beautiful, I think they would take one look at that that mosquito and it would really change their perspective.
So, yes, they can be stunning in metallic blues and feathery legs and a tenny and these glorious shimmers. And why does that even matter? Well, if you are intimately bonding over blood with one, it's nice to know its name. So while not all mosquitoes are transmitting diseases into your organs, a few might be, so it's good to be familiar. So eighties is a genus that can carry zega and yellow fever, and eighties a jypdi are those beautiful striped
like Art Deco black and white, sparkly ones. They are day snackers on your flesh. Now, the Kalex genus tends to be a little bluff like all beige, kind of like a hospital waiting room. They're very common. They're called a house mosquito, and they prefer to eat at night. Side note, they can also carry west now virus, dog heartworm, and some other scaries, and if I may, they're the
least interesting to look at. Now, Anophlies. These buggers carry malaria, and you can spot them by their four fashionable brown wing spots and the way that they keep their ass in the air when they're drinking. You like a mosquito doing a keg stand. And just like your junior year homecoming date, it might do that keg stand before absolutely fucking you and giving you a disease, in this case malaria anophales. They bite at night and they kill a
lot of people. Now, if you wish that there was a Facebook for mosquitoes, the closest we might have is the twenty twenty two study Participatory Approaches for Raising Awareness among Subsistence Farmers in Tanzania about the spread of insecticide resistance and malaria vectors and the possible link to improper agricultural pesticide use, which notes that local farmers wanted to know what these things look like, including learning that the
malaria vector Anophales floats as a larva parallel to the water surface, and according to the study quote, some participants referred to eighties as being the most beautiful mosquitoes, given its black body and white spots. They also referred to male mosquitoes as bearded, providing reference to their feathery antennae, just like human males. And the study quotes one thirty four year old farmer who exclaimed, oh, now I understand that not every mosquito in my house is anophales and
can transmit malaria. There are other mosquitoes which also dominate our village. We love bug appreciation, but why these morphological stylistic differences. So, according to the twenty twenty three study the origin of black and white coloration of the Asian Tiger Mosquito, calcidologists found that it might be to communicate within their species for mating and also as a predator deflection. And I don't want to brag for eighties, but the
paper uses the exact phrase motion dazzle camouflage. Clearly, calcidologists appreciate their study species. Do you have a soft spot in your heart for mosquitoes having studied them?
I do, Unfortunately, it's very Oh great, that's great, I do. And so I think they're really interesting and I think it's so wild how they've kind of evolved alongside of us, especially these species that are utilizing these urban habitats. But anytime I was doing glab work, I slightly felt bad. But at the same time I was like, mosquito eggs hatch all the time. We have plentiful mosquitoes in the lab,
but they do have a soft spot for me. So I am when people are like, should we eradicate all mosquitoes, I'm like, hold on, you know, they're of the three seven hundred species. We have only a certain amount of them are able to transmit pathogens that are concerning for human and animals, and the rest are just They're doing what's basic to their biology and for the ecology.
Okay, So how many mosquitoes are a quiet nemeses that we don't understand but we feel obligated to hate. We know, maybe it's rash and that is not an itchy pun, but we must be a llegiant to our own skin, right, So how many are enemies? I checked into the evidence and the accusations aka the twenty twenty three study Robust Network Stability of Mosquitoes and Human Pathogens of Medical Importance, and it turns out that the majority of mosquitoes are
screaming from their tiny knife mops. Only two point five percent of mosquito species are known disease spreaders, and the jury is still out on a lot of the other species. But at most it would be nine point three percent, less than a tenth of mosquitoes given you parasites, So that's good, right. Also, it's not their fault that they have baggage in the form of pathogens. And if they could quit blood and not risk being loathed and swatted and flattened by your big hands, I'm sure they would do.
All of those species use blood as like a meal or as I'm not sure why they use blood, and we will get to that because it is a huge question. But like, what are commonalities with mosquito? Is it just a long legs? Is it the blood lust? Is it the proboscis? Like what makes a mosquito mosquito?
So a few things. So, mosquitoes are in the order Diptera, which are the order that all of our flies are grouped into. So Diptera is Greek for two wings, so it refers to the characteristic set of wings that they have on their back. That's what gives us flies.
See our amazing diypterrology episode with doctor Brian Lessard, who names flies after drag queens officially happy Pride.
By the way, now, for mosquitos, we have a few distinctive features that make the mosquitoes. One, it's their mouth part. So mosquitos have this elongated two like mouthpart called the proboscis, which they use to pierce the skin and extract blood. And this adaptation is unique to female mosquitos because it's essential that they blood feed. That blood is necessary for egg development. And contrasts, our common house fly have these sponge like mouthparts which they use to sponge up liquids.
Ah. Yes, that dipterrology episode I mentioned on flies goes into greater, darker, disgusting depth of barfing and lapping it up after tasting with their feet. Let's take a quick trip back to dipterurology with doctor Brye the fly Geye, they do deserve some slack, they do. What about their feet? Do they taste with their feet? Are they covered in shit all the time?
Well, they have happy feet, because yes, they do taste from their feet. They're impatient. Instead of waiting to get the food in their mouth and like, you know, taste it that way like we would, they like to stand in whatever they're eating, and it's yes, no, do I eat it? Do I not? And so what they do is if it tastes good, that's when they'll drop. Their probossis their mouth pot that has a sponge at the
end that SAPs up all the liquid. And they actually do eat shit because shit is high in protein and other nutrients and electrolytes as well.
But that's a dipterrology episode. And while mosquitos are flies, we're honing in on colcidology specifically, and according to the National Institutes of Health, yes, mosquitoes, like housewives, can taste with their mouth but also their feet. They love you before they even cut you.
We also know that female mosquitos, you know, outside of requiring blood for egg development, they can utilize a variety of different feeding hosts. And so that is a few things that make mosquitoes mosquitoes.
Are some of them solely looking for frog blood and some are looking for bird blood, and some are down with humans or are they like if I can pierce it and suck it, I will.
So you do have mosquito species that will feed on reptiles and amphibians, and you have some that are sylvatic and prefer forested habitats where they'll find like these woodland creatures, and you have some that primarily prefer to feed off of humans, so you do have a there is a variety in what they will feed on in their host preference at the end of the day.
So, according to the twenty twenty one study Differential attraction in Mosquito Human Interactions and Implications for disease control, some mosquitoes prefer non humans like birds and mammals. They're zoophilic, and others want most of you and they're androphilic. But the study also found that if their preferred meal is not available, don't take their second or third option, like ordering a patty melt when the diner's eighty six don rubens. But sometimes it's not even a goofy bird or a
squirrel they want. There was this twenty eighteen study identification of Uranotinea saparina as a specialist of annelids broadens known mosquito host use patterns, and it explains that quote despite over a century of intensive study, no mosquito species is known to specialize on non vertebrate hosts. However, they continue. We provide the first evidence to our knowledge that a mosquito, in this case, Euritinea safarina, a gorgeously blue flecked creature
specializes on earthworms and leeches. I mean, I have friends who only drink biodynamic natural wines. I have others who would happily enjoy a room temperature gin out of a solo cup.
I'm simply saying that life.
Finds a way. Wonder how the proboscis must be able to pierce reptile skin. Do they go in between the scales? Do they just get up in there?
So the pcus is strong ish, but you know, reptile skin is hard. So I've seen videos where they've recorded the mosquito host seeking and the mosquito found like a little tiny slither of skin where a scale wasn't covering it, or the softest part of the body of that animal. So sometimes that's the stomach area that's easier for them to bite, or maybe that might be near some other orifices.
You know, I think that happened to my daughter Gmy a dog who has a mosquite looks like a mosquito bite right on her tummy, but you know where she has less fur. Is that what happens to mammals too, is it easier to bite you know, under the legs or somewhere where it's more vulnerable. Yeah.
Similarly, when we go outside, typically when we're you know, hiking or doing like a lot of outdoor activities. To protect ourselves from mosquitoes, we might wear long sleeve clothing and socks, but mosquitoes will find those spots that are not covered that are most vulnerable. And so with domestic animals like cats and dogs, it's easy to go for areas where there is and a lot of furs. So that's going to be the facial area, maybe around the eyes,
but also under the tummy. And I've also seen my dog used to get a lot of bug bites near her ear as well.
Gotcha. Yeah, I'm from California, and I remember I went to like Minnesota for a wedding once in the summer and the air was just thick with mosquitoes. I'd never seen anything like it because I'm from like more arid climate. Yeah, and I had been bending over like doing something, helping out or whatever, and I had like a belt of mosquito bites from like where my shirt had like come up.
They don't care, but where.
Where where on your body is safe? I asked the twenty two twenty two study observing the distribution of mosquito bites on humans to inform personal protection measures against malaria and dengey vectors, which somehow convinced four volunteers to get in a room with lab reared and disease free but starving mosquitoes from either six am to noon for day biting eighties or six pm to midnight for night biting anophalies,
for twenty days. And from this blood sacrifice, we now know that the anophales bites when the volunteer was standing up, those were almost all below the knee. Anophalies they liked below the knee. But when these generous volunteers were lying down sleeping, they got bitten all over their damn body by the anophalies which are night biters. Now, the day biting eighties bites were only about fifty percent below the knees, and then they were all over the place while sleeping.
So researchers concluded that wearing socks, trousers, and long sleeve shirts could theoretically prevent up to eighty three percent of bites during sleeping and at least ninety percent of non
sleeping bites. I also was like, okay, that's good. But I scanned the entire paper for some explanation of how they convinced people to participate in the study, and I came up blank, other than the fact that these folks were in Tanzania and they had a vested interests perhaps and donating their fragile skin and blood to science for
malarial prevention. Since they didn't get paid for their service, I'm going to read from the study acknowledgments, which include, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to our volunteers, Moses Lagani, Bonafas mcguilla, Baraka Kidwanga and Ibrahim Mizkaia from me, thank you, sirs for withstanding that lion's den of tiny predators.
Yeah they're ruthless, they're.
Rutless, but they're smart and maybe I smelled delicious. We'll get to that too. But do they live everywhere and there's just more of them in more humid climates or do we just like straight up not see them in Antarctica.
So mosquitoes are what makes them really interesting is that they can take up a lot of these ecological niches so they're ubiquitous in many parts of the world, and their distribution at the end of the day is going to be influenced by environmental conditions and the availability of suitable breeding sites.
So how good is the vibe? Can you mate? Can you lay eggs?
There?
For the most part, most places will do doctor where Gilmour says.
So, we've seen mosquitoes thrive and habitats including temperate rainforest, tropical rainforest, urban areas. But again, you know, we're not seeing mosquitos in Antarctica, but we are seeing them in a lot of different places. And when we have changes in climate as well, it's creating more suitable habitat for these populations to shift.
Oh right, Like right now, we might not be seeing them in the top of a Nordic fuorn, but give it a couple decades and who knows, maybe there'll be a Sandals resort there.
Oh yeah, and their logo would be like a mosquito.
Everything's changing. It is what about the temperature? How much does the temperature affect that? And do they all just die in the winter? What happens to them?
Yeah, so not all species of mosquito die in the winter. You have some species that will overwinter, so they'll overwinter as eggs, or they might overwinter as larvae, depending on where they are. So if you have a thick level of ice or something that might basically be incubating them or allowing them to be dormant, that might change. So not all mosquito species die during the winter.
So yes, some of your summer skeeters survived the winter without a parka mittens no six dollars latte that got cold as soon as you stepped outside. They just honkered down under ice, tougher than you, no offence.
And then as far as temperature plays a huge role in mosquito physiology and bio and so temperatures need to be not perfect but just right so you see the emergence of the larvae into pepe and the pupe into adult.
I remember when I was a kid, I thought I had found a new species of animal because I looked into a bucket and saw all these tiny shrimp, and then my dad was like, those are just misquit.
Oh that's okay. Now, they're very funny looking. When they're at that stage, they're just like, I don't really know what you are. And there are a lot of other fly species that will lay their eggs and bodies of water and hatch, so it can be confusing on what they might actually be.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that life cycle and why a female mosquito needs that blood meal? Do they need that right before they lay eggs and the rest of the time what do they mention on.
That's a good question. So do we want a full story of the mosquito life cycle?
Of course?
Okay, dude, come.
On, that's fun. I love it. I wish we'd had visuals because there's so many there's so many departments of health and mosquito abatement groups that have beautiful visuals that they use an outreach to describe the life stages of the mosquito. But for this, for this, I'll try and paint a picture. And so we'll start with eighties a jip dye. This is a container breeding mosquito, so it prefers to breed in man made containers that are left around.
So in the twenty fifteen study breeding sites of eighties A jip dye potential denge vectors in East Ethiopia, colesidologists set out to see which reservoirs of water were the most attractive to expectant mosquito moms. And first off, rain water only plays. Okay, they did not prefer to lay eggs in tapwater. It's got to be fresh, organic from
the sky. Now. Some attractive places included mud pots, old sinks, small puddles, and rumpled up tarps and neglected buckets and such, but the top spot for Amazi nursery overwhelmingly old tires. Absolutely darling love obsessed.
And so a female who has blood fed, who has made it, will lay these eggs on the edge of the water, and those eggs will hatch after a certain amount of time. Once they hatch, we call those larvae. The species will stay as larvae for around maybe we'll
say four to six days. And again this is dependent on temperature conditions, because if temperature is higher, the pace of them hatching and also the pace of them at their larval stage might be quicker, or if it's lower, you might have a slower developmental cycle.
Okay, different species have different parroting styles, but a lot of common mosquitoes will lay a bunch of eggs like in a raft style, kind of in a bundle, and then when the larvae are in the water. Some will be underwater using little snorkel on their face, while other species, like the malaria carrying an Ophiles genus, is floating flat
right under the water surface. Before they emerge as adults rising from the water to conquer the air, they go through an awkward pupa stage where they look like shrimps with big, weird heads.
And after larvae we have pupe. The pewpe under the microscope look like little Shrek. They're like little commas with struck ears. They're funny looking. And then after the pewfae, we have adults. So they'll emerge from that aquatic habitat into terrestrial adults, and then as adults they'll mate and then continue that cycle of laying eggs, turning into larvae,
turning into pewpe and adults again. But during that the female will need to take on a blood meal for specific biological and reproductive reasons, so they need a blood meal in order to obtain the necessary nutrients for egg development. The blood meal provides a lot of things for them.
It's providing amino acids and other proteins that are essential for their yolk and so mosquito eggs have a type of yolk protein and additionally the iron obtained from the blood aids and physiological processes needed for the overall egg development.
She's like a hot smoothie chocolate block with fat and meat bits and protein and iron. Listen, I've never had a baby out of any whole of mine, but I have been essential to growing new life on planet Earth in garbage tires. And then these babies grow up and you hate them. Oh yeah, I mean good for them, Good for them. I'm not mad at it.
So it's just like a tasty treat before you know. She has to do the big push if if that makes it any better, it.
Does, It does good good for her? Is she eating or he eating anything else? In the interim, If she's like, Okay, I'm ready to nest, I'm ready to start a family. I need a blood meal. But if she's like, I'm not quite ready yet, I'm still exploring the world. Is she eating nectar? Is she a waterfast?
Yeah?
Water fast? Yes, so yeah, when she's not taking a blood meal. Mosquitos male and female are nectar feeder, So they're going to be using these flower resources as a sugar resource to get them by. So at the end of the day, they're actually pollinators.
Oh yeah, look at that. They're just pollinating, and then when it's time to start a family, they just borrow a little bit of iron and protein from you. Are they looking also for anything hormonal? I feel like that is maybe a source of flim flam.
That has always been a complicated one for me as well. I feel like I've done a deep dive on what make mosquitoes attract it to you. So we know that they're picking up certain olfactory cues and visual cues from us. So that's going to be carbon dioxide our CO two, but they're also going to be picking up signals from our sweat. So there are chemicals and our sweat that they can smell that make us very attractive.
It's amazing.
Is that worse than if you're like hiking and you're breathing out a lot of carbon dioxide and your respiratory rates higher and you're sweatier. Is this why if you're hiking like the Pacific Crust Trail or something, you're screwed.
Yeah. I mean, so they're picking up those indicators and they're using it when they're trying to basically seek out a host to feed from. So if you're breathing more because you're hiking and you're letting out more co two, that's just giving a better signal to the mosquito to be like, oh, that might be something I could blood feed from.
We're going to dive back into what makes you so attractive to mosquitoes or potentially less attractive in a minute, but first some words from sponsors of the show, who make it possible to donate to a related cause each week, and this week it'll be going to the Malaria No More Foundation, which has worked for nearly two decades campaigning to end malaria and make a world where no one
dies from a mosquito bite. And so far, well over two billion mosquito nuts have been distributed in the area's hardest hit by malarial traransmission and over seven million lives have been saved and you can find out more at malariaomore dot org. And thanks to sponsors of the show for making that donation possible. Okay, so we were talking about who gets bitten the most and if you're wondering do people really study that, the answer is are you Okay?
Of course they do, Yes, Calcidologists are all about this question and according to the twenty twenty one meta study Variability and Human attractiveness to mosquitoes, mosquitoes are known to find and bite humans by being attracted to carbon dioxide, lactic acid, keytones, ammonia, and other volatile organic compounds through our skin. Also noted in this meta study is that it's possible that diet can make you more attractive and the two top culprits they found beer and bananas make
you more delicious to mosquitoes or being pregnant. So according to the twenty twenty three paper Prevalence of Malaria parasite and its effects on some hematological parameters amongst pregnant women in Nigeria, Yeah, pregnant people in the advanced stages of pregnancy exhale twenty one percent more carbon dioxide than non pregnant people, which makes them much more attractive to mosquitoes. And that's obviously a risk for both the baby and the parent. You do not want to get a disease
from hungry mosquitoes. But yeah, while garlic through the skin will not repel these little vampires, your sweat, your microbes and just simply breathing breathing out carbon dioxide can be like a ring and dinner bill, like come and get it to swarms of them. I had a boyfriend once who was hiking in the Pacific Coast Trail years ago, and he said that they turned around and went home
earlier because there were so many mosquitoes. And I was like, Oh, I wonder if they're just breathing a lot, so they're looking for carbon dioxide. They're looking for certain things in your sweat as well.
Yeah, so there's like chemical cues and are sweat that they're picking up. And that's why you've probably hurt this that certain blood types are more attractive to miss mosquitos. And this is because every blood type has a chemical signature, and some based off a few papers, might be more attractive to mosquitoes than others. But I think at the end of the day, it really is the overall person and their biology at the time that might change depending on the mosquito species and the time and place.
I love that you have done a deep dive on this. Have so many people asked to you that you're what caused you to start looking to these papers?
I so I think early on it was like I have type B blood? Does that make me more attractive? But at the end of the day, I was just like, but what is it about type bee blood or whatever other blood types that are attractive two mosquitos? Like what is the biology behind that? Why is the blood actually attractive for me? I think it is like a full scale picture of it's different indicators from that person beat co two chemical cues from the sweat microbiota or like
the microbes in your speat as well. They find that attractive. That is more of an indicator of if you're attractive to mosquitoes or not.
You just got your PhD, but you're already published on several papers I saw about thermal sensitivity and microbes and thermal stress responses and temperature. What does temperature have to do with how mosquitoes either look for a blood meal or just exist?
Right? So I guess we'll frame this in the context of climate change. So climate change is going to influence mosquito population and disease transmission in several ways. And the first thing we think about is the expansion of mosquito habitats into new regions as temperatures rise, and also the precipitation.
Patterns doctor Wergilmore says that altered seasonal patterns of mosquito activity can also lead to more transmission and longer transmission periods also increase disease risk. So climate change isn't just water levels rising on seassych cottagists.
But you know that at the mosquito level, temperature can impact basically the growth rate and developmental rate of the mosquito, but also the rate of development for the pathogen inside
of the mosquito. So we call this the extringic incubation period or the EIP, and EIP is the amount of time it takes for that pathogen to develop to traverse throughout the body of the mosquito and make it to the salivary glands where it then can be passed on when the mosquito is taking a new blood meal from an uninfected host.
Okay, So that extrinsic incubation period of malaria is also called the period of sporogeny, and it describes the time it takes four parasites to develop in the mosquito from the moment they take in cometocites or sex cells via a tainted blood meal and when they mate in their guts and travel to the salivary glands to be splurted
into your bloodstream. And according to Malaria, Parasite Development and Mosquitos, a nineteen ninety eight journal article in the Annual Review of Entomology, Plasmodium vivax one of the five species of the single celled protozoa which causes malaria in humans. It takes just nine days from the ingestion to doing the nasty and mating in the mosquito tummy to taking up space in their salivary glands of the bug to get
into you. So that extrinsic incubation period is important because it means you can be infected and malaria can spread before you've ever even shown symptoms or gotten treated to kill it. And so that pathogen lives in the salivary glands. And can you tell me a little bit about how the bites work. Is they're a little bit of a blurf of stuff into you before they suck it back up. Like are they spitting a little bit into you before they start sucking it up or are there like anti inflammatories?
What does that needle mouth have?
Yeah, so I guess we can look at the mosquito mouth part as like six different needles. So you have two of them which are going to be holding back the skin, one of them which is actually doing the piercing and the sucking, and then you have actually two of them that are sawing at the skin. Right ballad what.
Yeah, they have.
This very specialized mouthpart that is frightening when you look at pictures up close.
Six they have six yea including two saws. That's amazing. That makes predator or like sci Fi monsters seem like so simple. Okay to hold it open like a surgeon.
Mm hmm, two to saw.
Okay, what is the sawing What are the sawing ones doing?
Well?
I guess it's helping them kind of get through the skin to the capullaries, the blood vessels or the capulariesh that's so cool. So we touched on some of the temperature work that I did previously, and I guess when we think about climate change, it's also just not risk of infection or increase mosquito bites based on the habitat you're in, but it's also the impact that it's going
to have on the mosquito at an individual level. And so the work I was doing before was looking at how infection with some of these pathogens alter the mosquito in its ability to cope with temperature, and what that might mean for how we see the expansion of some of these mosquito ranges.
Does it look like some of their numbers will reduce or are we looking at a huge increase?
Yeah, So it really depends on the mosquito species and the habitat and their prior thermal history. So in some areas we expect a contraction of mosquito species, but in others we expect that to expand in their geographical range to increase. But a lot of things have to fall in place for disease transmission to take place, So it's really species dependent.
When you're talking about the Salbary glands. And then I absolutely lost my shit hearing that they have six different needles in their Yeah, which that's like, I was really blowing my mind right out. Can you tell me more about that surgery that they perform. It sounds like laparoscopic surgery.
Yeah. So the first time I saw a mosquito mouthpart, I was like, what is going on?
But is this? Let's get into these twinkly sawmouthed, tiny little blood zombie fairies.
So when a female mosquito pierces the skin, she has this basically this flexible lipke chief that scues up and it stays outside as the insect pushes in basically six needle like parts. And so two of these three needles are called the maxillae, and they have these tiny teeth that let the mosquito saw through human skin or through skin in general. And they're kind of like little drill bits and so yeah, they're so sharp we don't really
fill the bite, but they do enough damage. And then we have another set of meat, the mandibles, that hold the tissue apart while the mosquito saws into the skin. And then the fifth needle is called the labrum, and it pierces the blood vessel.
Wow, so they use some to spread it kind of like like it just sounds like they're doing surgery. Yeah, I mean they're surgeons.
Yeah. And you have that fifth needle part that's piercing the blood vessel. It's looking for the blood vessel in that so it's like moving around in the skin to find the blood vessel.
Oh my gosh.
And then do they just do a folk into the blood vessel and then is that kind of like a needle or is that also kind of like a saw?
Like?
How are they piercing and sucking at the same time.
That is basically just piercing into the blood vessel, and they're able to suck up with that appendage as well. The other two appendages have done the basically the service of sawing. And then that last fifth needle, the labrum, is piercing but also sucking the sucking mouth part.
And of course some mosquitoes fill up more than others, but the most common size mosquitos are around six millimeters long and they weigh a few milligrams at most, although they can drink two to three times their body weight at a time, and according to the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District, mosquitos can take in anywhere from point one to point oh one millimeters of blood, and their website says for its size, that would be the equivalent of a person drinking as much as is in
a bathtub, says the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. Let me tell you something, Coachella knows a little something about seasonal bingch drinking. When we're talking about teen mosquitos and big ones do all of their mouth parts function kind of the same.
So, yeah, that proboscis and that piercing sucking mouth part is going to be the same for most of the species. It will change in size and the coloration might look different, but it serves the purpose.
And when I picture a mosquito, I picture the ones that I probably grew up around and are more common to the West coast of the United States. But how is small and how big do they get?
Yeah, so our biggest species of mosquito is our elephant mosquitos, so tuso runkities, and so this he is a big fella. She's a big fella, but she they have these tusks on them at the end of their proboscus. But they are quite large mosquitoes, not as large as crane flies, which people typically get confused with mosquitoes, but they are some of the larger of our mosquito species that we have.
And crane flies they're not skeeter eaters, right, I thought forever like, oh those crane flies, don't worry, they eat mosquitoes. That's total horsepucky, right.
Yeah, you know it's okay because when I moved to Georgia with my family. The names for crane flies for so wild. It was like mosquito hawk, like hot killer, and I was like a hot killer. I'm like, what is that? But you know, crane flies don't actually live that long either. They are using nectar as their main resource for energy. But they are not predators to mosquitoes or people, right, They're just trying to live their life nope or people. You know, you kind of feel bad
for them, like they're not the most graceful flyers. Anytime I've seen a crane fly, they're like trying to make it to the door of the window. And then you just like have this random man in Walmart who's just like kill that mosquito, and you're like, sir, that crane fly is just trying to live his best life, Like let him go.
He just wants to go find some fresh grass.
He does, like their main job is to mate, like they're born. They're like, let me go find some sugar and then let me go mate and then die.
They just want to snack in a date.
Right, Yeah, I mean he is all of us.
So crane flies neither mosquitoes nor mosquito assassins. Just lonely, big bumbling mosquito look and sugar lovers who might accidentally saunter clumsily into a big box store to get slandered and then killed.
So one of the big reasons I really enjoyed and was drawn to studying mosquitoes is because they're so diverse and so, as with most animal size does matter, And like other groups, there's considerable size range of mosquito adults,
even though they all look the same to us. And so I think the biggest difference that I've seen would probably be Urana tani and then talkso run Kaiti, so Talkso run Kiti's and Dali nippers are quite large mosquitoes, and I think mass wise, between the smallest and the largest, it's maybe like a sixty fold mass different, so quite big.
What about the teeny ones? How teeny teeny do they get?
So I will say that I'm pretty biased because I work with a larger mosquito species, so eighties. Mosquitoes in general are a little bit hardier, a little bit bigger than a nave lines. But I will say that from my perspective that anofe species of mosquitoes tend to gear towards the smaller end compared to like an eighties or a qlex mosquito.
When it comes to mating and finding a date, how are mosquitoes finding each other? Is their natural selection? Or is it like this world is so big, I'm small, you're small. Let's do it.
I think you know, it would be so fun to be like, is there a hinge for mosquitoes where they make like a profile picture They're like, I'm from Alaska. But no, in all seriousness, So that buzzing noise that we find so irritating is actually emitted by mosquitos and it's used for communication but also mate location, and so male mosquitoes actually produce a higher frequency of sound versus female and they're using that to locate and pursue a mate and potentially avoid threats and other predators.
Is there something evolutionarily about a really annoying noise that helps them mate? Or I wonder if you hear a high, high, high pitched annoying one, if that means it's a mail and it's not going to bite.
You, right, that's interesting. So for me, I think it has to do more with their morphology, and I think it's the way that their wings are set on their body, So I think they're able to produce that higher frequency sound because they are oscillating so quickly, And maybe that was just like something that was used as a signal for identifying potential mates.
So apparently mosquitoes can flap their tiny little wings up to one thousand times a second at a tremendously high frequency over seven hundred hearts, which is about the same pitch as a police siren, although it can vary depending
on the mood they're trying to set. And according to some researchers at Cornell, male mosquitoes usually are thrumbing a buzz around six to seven hundred hertz, and ladies are a bit lower of four hundred hertz, But when they find each other and are about to mate, they are quite literally vibing. They're raising their buzz frequency in harmonics to about twelve hundred hertz, which is right at like
the whistletone registers like Mariah Carey's high notes. Just two bugs just get it on, and the males have these bushy antennay to pick up on ladies' locations. Using seven thousand cents resells dedicated to hearing which is almost as
many as you have now. In case you're like this seems like something I could get into and you need a meditation playlist, get yourself some inspo with this freshest hell paper from last month surveillance of mosquitos harnessing their buzzing sound, which concluded that yes, mosquito sounds are species specific and sex specific and important for communication, and they can even relay fed or unfed status. Cornell researcher doctor David hoy has said they are interacting on the fly
an in song. So they're kind of like hummingbirds that are surgeons a little bit, yeah maybe, but that are also sparkly.
They're also sparkly, you know, hummingbirds and mosquitoes kind of they're fast, they're kind of sparkly, and they have that weird mouth art right.
The tiniest hummingbirds ever. They just happen to like meat, which is you yea some of them. Yeah, but we have one bazillion questions from listeners, which we were not going to toss it you all at once, but can I ask them from listeners?
Yeah?
Amazing. So next week we return with all the tips on how to repel them. What you can spray on your skin, what to do in your yard? We talk Zeka, Dangay, malaria, West Nile, how much to worry about each of them, and so many more practicalities that will make you itch and scratch a little less. Meanwhile, ask Mozzi people amazing questions because it's worth the wait. Now. You can follow doctor r Gilmour on x at Mazzifowl linked in the show notes. She's on Instagram at Foxyfoul, which is also
linked style and mosquito appreciation in equal measures. She's lovely. We'll be back next week with more of her wisdom and her bug facts and my personal giddiness. We're at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Aliward on both. Smologies is our new spin off show in its own subscribable feed, kid and Classroom safe shorter cuts of classic episodes. You can subscribe at the link in the show notes. That's Smologies. Please do tell friends with kids. Port of
mouth is everything to us, so tell a friend. Ologies merch is available at ologiesmirch dot com. You can become a patron at patreon dot com. Slash Ologies. Our ologies podcast Facebook group is admined by Aaron Talbert. Professional transcripts by Aveline Mallick of The Wordery. Noel Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our managing director, who recently celebrated a birthday. Even though she tends to lay low on her birthday. We love you, Susan, deal with it.
This episode was edited by Jake Chafe and lead editor who has earned her scally mosquito stripes. Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I Tell you a secret. And this week I just realized that I said tell a friend. And there was this grocery store chain. I must have been like three, and it was called Alpha Beta and their commercials were like Alpha Beta, tell a friend. And I took that very literally.
And there was a friend of mine in the neighborhood named Tom who was technically my first husband. We were three, we were set up. We had a ceremony. Actually scratch that, his name was Tad. I'm sorry about that. Tad pirs husband's always gets the shaft. But anyway, having been instructed by Alpha Beta via a commercial to please tell a friend, I was like, hey, tad alpha beta, I did it, and I hope he still remembers. But ologies tell a friend,
you can just say the word. You don't have to elaborate. I think either way it's a pretreciate it. But anyway, all right, that's it. Next week, more mosquitoes. How do you repel them? What do you do? What do you do? What do you do?
Why we got you? Bye bye?
Pacodermatology, homology or doo zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, no, pedatology, nanthology, seriology, selenology. It's just the mosquitoes.
They love me.