More and more mosquitoes: they gain 5 kilometers every year due to the changing climate

The mosquitoes I’m on the march. They’ve been there for a long time, come on climate changes which expand their range every year. And the illnesses that rely on their annoying bite to infect humans, such as the malariathe dengueor infection by zika virus. This is nothing new, of course, but a new study just published in Biology Letters by a group of researchers from Georgetown University in Washington reveals the incredible advance of Anopheles mosquitoes on the African continent, indicating a southward expansion of their range by almost five kilometers every year over the past 120 years.

The research was carried out using a large dataset compiled by medical entomologists, detailing the presence of mosquitoes across the continent since 1898. A period of time during which the planet warmed up, on average, by 1.2 degrees, thus opening new areas to colonization by Anopheles, insects that thrive in the presence of relatively high temperatures.

In the analyzed period, thearea inhabited by mosquitoes has expanded by more than 500 kilometers towards the south of the continent, also reaching a height of 700 meters higher than the initial one. This is – explain the authors of the research – the first data confirming that mosquitoes have already begun to colonize new environments for some time on the impetus of climate change. And of crucial proof that the global warming it already represents an important factor that influences the dynamics of transmission of the diseases that mosquitoes carry with them.

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Thanks to the new results it is possible to understand, for example, the increase in cases of malaria recorded in the last decades in the mountainous areas of southern Africa. A phenomenon whose explanation in the past divided the scientific community. “This is exactly what you would expect to see if climate change was helping these species reach colder parts of the continent,” he explains. Colin Carlson, from Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. “The fact that mosquitoes are reaching these new areas for the first time helps explain some recent changes in the transmission of malaria that have otherwise been difficult to link to climate change”.

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Knowing better how the rising temperatures guide the movements of mosquitoes, in the future it will be possible to allocate more precisely the available resources for the prevention of diseases with them. Paying particular attention to the border areas of their range, where billions of people could be newly exposed to mosquito-borne diseases, and where it is also more likely that their advance will find health facilities unprepared. “We still know very little about how climate change affects life biodiversity of invertebrates – concludes Carlson – and public health is providing us with a privileged observation point on how these insects thrive and spread in a changing climate. Although, sadly, this is bad news for humans.”