Welcome to You Ask Andy

 Loretta Parisien, age 11, of Winnipeg, Man., Canada, for her question:

CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT MOSQUITOES?

None of the news from this quarter is pleasant. From the human point of view, the mosquito is nothing but a pesky problem. However, trillions of mosquitoes become food for billions of birds, bats and other insect eaters which play important roles in the ecology. Let's keep this in mind when we long to wipe out all the mosquitoes in the world.

There are about 2,000 different mosquitoes, and all are classed as aquatic insects because they spend part of their lives in water or in moist surroundings. They belong to the same insect group as the flies, and these fragile creatures are at home almost everywhere, from the frozen tundra to the torrid tropics.

The average mosquito of the temperate zones is a wispy, quarter inch creature with long skinny legs. The adult flies on gauzy little wings and sips a liquid diet through a tubular beak. The somewhat larger female buzzes her wings, and her beak is strong enough to pierce skin and suck blood. The male does not buzz his wings, and his weaker beak cannot stab through flesh. He feeds on plant sap.

Come summer, the female lays rafts of little white eggs, which float on a pond, a lazy creek or some other stretch of quiet water. The newly hatched larvae are bristly grubs with large heads. Though they live in the water, they must reach the surface to breathe air through the tubes in their tails.

The frisky larvae are fierce and famished. They devourplant food and also prey on small creatures in the water,including each other. After a week or so, the larvae becomequiet pupas, which hang head down, just below the surface. Ifthe season is summery, the next and last change comes after a few days. The tough pupa shells split open, swarms of adult mosquitoes emerge and fly to prey on plants, animals and people.

In warm desert regions the female may survive through the winter. In cool regions, mosquitoes get through the winter in the egg or pupa stage. In the chilly tundra, they get enough moisture from the snow to see them through the first three stages of life.

The female mosquito is a born bloodsucker. Her fierce beak is a mini tool kit with stabbers to pierce the skins of people and animals. It has a needle to inject the stuff that causes the itchy bump and a siphon to suck up her liquid diet. All mosquito bites are painful, but certain species carry germs that cause malaria, yellow fever and other dangerous diseases.

 

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