Latest Mosquito Stories
OXFORD, England, February 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Oxitec Ltd, a British company pioneering a new approach to combating dengue fever, announced today that it has secured GBP8 million of new investment. The investment will finance further trials of the Oxitec Control Programme, designed to reduce populations of the dengue mosquito in communities hardest hit by the disease. The Oxitec solution harnesses advanced genetics to create 'sterile' male insects. The company has...
A species of mosquito has been discovered breeding in the UK that has not been seen in the country since 1945. Populations of the mosquito, found across mainland Europe and known only by its Latin name Culex modestus, were recorded at a number of sites in the marshes of north Kent and south Essex in 2010 and 2011. The discovery was made by post-graduate student Nick Golding, and the mosquito was definitively identified by colleague Stefanie Schäfer of the Centre for Ecology &...
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Jan. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California (MVCAC) will host its 2012 Annual Conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, California. The top issues being addressed at the conference are a new Clean Water Act permit requirement that may result in mosquito control agencies being unable to provide the same level of protection from vector-borne diseases and the recent infestation of the Asian tiger...
KOLDING, Denmark, Jan. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Bestnet A/S announced today that their donation of 2500 striped Netprotect® Long Lasting Insecticide Incorporated Mosquito Nets (LLINs) has been received by the Rotary Club of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). The donated nets are unique in that they were manufactured in royal blue and gold stripes to match the colors of the Rotary International logo. Rotary International Logo:http://www.ereleases.com/pic/2012-RotaryLogo.jpg Malaria is...
As mosquito-borne viral diseases like West Nile fever, dengue fever, and chikungunya fever spread rapidly around the globe, scientists at Virginia Tech are working to understand the mosquito's immune system and how the viral pathogens that cause these diseases are able to overcome it to be transmitted to human and animal hosts. In nearly every part of the world, humans and animals experience high levels of morbidity and mortality after being bitten by mosquitoes infected with viruses. More...
The microbes on your skin determine how attractive you are to mosquitoes, which may have important implications for malaria transmission and prevention, according to a study published Dec. 28 in the online journal PLoS ONE. Without bacteria, human sweat is odorless to the human nose, so the microbial communities on the skin play a key role in producing each individual's specific body odor. The researchers, led by Niels Verhulst of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, conducted their...
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute have demonstrated that the Anopheles mosquito's innate immune system could be genetically engineered to block the transmission of malaria-causing parasites to humans. In addition, they showed that the genetic modification had limited impact on the mosquito's fitness under laboratory conditions. The researchers' findings are published December 22nd in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens. In this study, Dimopoulos and his team...
No one likes being bitten by whining mosquitoes, but have you ever considered what the experience is like for them as their cold-blooded bodies fill with our warm blood? Now researchers reporting online on December 15 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have uncovered the mosquitoes' secret to avoiding heat stress: they give up cooling droplets of their hard-won meals. The study shows for the first time that blood-feeding insects are capable of controlling their body temperature,...
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Mosquito Consolidated Gold Mines Limited (Mosquito - TSX Venture: MSQ, OTC-QX: MQCMF) wishes to give clarity to the misleading information being issued by the dissident group that includes present Directors of Mosquito, Mr. Hongxue Fu and Mr. Shaun Dykes neither of which is being nominated by the company for re-election at the upcoming Annual General Meeting. The unsupported and unfounded allegations levelled at the...
How fruit flies can teach us about curing chronic pain and halting mosquito-borne diseases Studies of a protein that fruit flies use to sense heat and chemicals may someday provide solutions to human pain and the control of disease-spreading mosquitoes. In the current issue of the journal Nature, biologist Paul Garrity of the National Center for Behavioral Genomics at Brandeis University and his team, spearheaded by KyeongJin Kang and Vince Panzano in the Garrity lab, report how fruit...
Latest Mosquito Reference Libraries
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease with a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family. It is transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes and is found in tropical and subtropical areas in South America and Africa, but not in Asia. Primates and a few kinds of mosquitoes are the only known hosts. The origin of the disease is most likely Africa. From there it was introduced to South America through the slave trade in the 16th century. There...
Aedes albopictus (Family Culicidae), the Asian Tiger Mosquito or Forest Day Mosquito, is characterized by its black and white striped legs and small, black and white body. It was native to south-east Asia, and occupied a habitat that spread from Madagascar eastward to New Guinea, and north to the latitude of Korea. The typical member of the Aedes albopictus has a length of about 5 mm. As with other members of the mosquito family, the female is outfitted with an elongated proboscis that she...
The crane flies (Tipulidae) are a family of insects that closely resemble giant mosquitoes. Like the mosquito, they are in the order Diptera (flies) and are sometimes called mosquito eaters, mosquito hawks, or skeeter eaters. They are also one of three unrelated arthropods named Daddy long-legs. The other two are the harvestmen and vibrating, cellar or house spider. As such, Crane Flies are wrapped up in the myth of being the most poisonous spider, but unable to bite humans. This is...
The mosquito is a member of the family Culicidae. These insects have a pair of scaled wings, a pair of halteres, a slender body, and long legs. Only the females of most mosquito species suck blood from other animals. Size varies but is rarely greater than 0.6 inch (15 mm). Mosquitoes weigh only about 0.03 to 0.04 grain (2 to 2.5 mg). They can fly at about 0.9 to 1.6 mph (1.5 to 2.5 km/h) and most species are nocturnal. Mosquitoes are believed to have evolved 170 million years ago during...
