Culicidology (MOSQUITOES) Part 1 with Fhallon Ware-Gilmore

Alie Ward
I know I usually save my secrets for the end of the episode, but I'm gonna tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's peanut butter cups. It's really Reese's. Anything but. Reese's peanut butter cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day?

I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these chocolate salty peanut butter. The textures. I love everything about them.

Also that there's two, so I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is 1 second later. Anyway. Reese's peanut butter cups. I love you. That's all.

If you're me, you can shop Reese's peanut butter cups now at a store near you. Found wherever candy is sold. And I am. This episode is brought to you by Merrick Petcare. And if you've heard me talk about Grammy, you know that she means the world to me.

I wanted a dog for probably ten years, and I was living in an apartment. Couldn't have dogs. When I finally moved somewhere else, I adopted her within weeks, and it was love at first scritch. She's about 2ft away from me. As I record this, she hangs out in the studio, and all I wanna do is smooch her and look at her and stare at her.

I also like feeding her because I see how happy it makes her. And there's nothing like watching her lick her chops after having yummy stuff like Grammy's pot pie or real Texas beef and sweet potato, which are two recipes she's been enjoying for America as her parent. I like that they use deboned meat and fish or poultry as the number one ingredient. I also like that they have these real ingredients, and you can see them on the bag, so you know what's in each one. And watching her do a little dance, especially with a Grammy's pot pie recipe, brings too much joy to my heart.

Is there such a thing as too much joy? I'm not sure, but check out Merrick online or in your local pet store and look for their new packaging with real ingredients shown on the bag and inside it. Oh, hey, it's the day. Drunk lady who loves your perfume? Allie Ward.

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 2020. Let's revisit it.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 Mozzie 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.

Alie Ward
But first, just a quick thanks to everyone who sends those questions in via patreon.com ologies. You can become a patron for as little as a buck a month. Thank you to everyone out there getting bitten in our ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com comma, where we have also a tick shirt that boldly reads check your crevices. We also have swimsuits 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 safe, 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 Jayna 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. Jay Demonic. I bet that spider is even happier than you are. Or I am. So well done.

Okay, cholcidology is a real word. It first appeared in the book review of a tome titled mosquitoes of New York in 1979, and the reviewer noted that Mosquitoes of New York is a great contribution to cholcidology and will stand as a frequently cited reference for years to come. Look at that. Right now, 44 years later, I'm citing that citation. So cholcidology.

It's a study of mosquitoes. The word comes from the Latin for Midge, their tiny cousins. And because you had so, so, so many very valid questions, this episode went very long. It turned from an itty bitty 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 mouths. Why it's vital to study them. Why they are scarier than a shark where they make their babies in your yard. Why the 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 entomologist, mosquito expert and appreciator cholecidologist, doctor Fallon Ware Gilmore. Finally. I love her.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
Hi, my name is Falimura Gilmore, and I use the pronoun 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 rollercoaster of, like, defend my PhD, move to Puerto Rico, and then completely forgot about what was going on.

Alie Ward
So you. You're a doctor wear Gilmore now? Yeah, I. It's wild. Yeah, I finished up my PhD last year.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
I just. I saw a Facebook memories post, and it was like me getting. I had just picked up my cap 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.

Alie Ward
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 postdoc 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
Maybe they go back to clinical work. So it really just depends on what is available at the time and what might catch my interest. 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. I'm gonna be honest. I started out undergrad as a marine biology major, and that just wasn't for me. Oh, thank you.

Alie Ward
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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
I was freaking out. I got so stuck in the mud that my shoes got lost. So I continued walking in 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 whales 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. That's 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 arachnid that I got after my internship. So they're cute up close. What was her name again?

Alie Ward
Rosie. What species was she? She was a rose haired tarantula. That's what I figured. I was, like, a pink toad or a rose hair.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
Yeah. She was so cute. She was the cutest little thing. So you were working in entomology and you're digging spiders, and then how did. Did you get the bug?

Alie Ward
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 with 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
And I learned at a conference that I could do that through medical entomology. And so my friend Shelley Whitehead. Thanks again. Shelly 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 borne 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 beautiful up close. Like, I know most people would be like, mosquitoes are ugly, but under a microscope, they're shiny, they're sparkly, they're beautiful. The scales are lovely.

Alie Ward
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, couldn't have 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 mosquitoes, 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 debilitating diseases, such as malaria, dengue, and West 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 1 million people die a year from some type of mosquito borne disease. So it is not the mosquito itself, but it is the pathogen 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 mosquitoes is roughly a million people a year now, also high on the list of animals that could kill you. You ready for this? Freshwater snails, also sand flies. They each transmit some parasite friends of their own.

Alie Ward
But, yeah, first on the list by a lot is mosquitoes at a million a year, with over 200 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 at over a half a million deaths per year, is 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 driving and texting, or maybe a person you work with who was 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 microscope do you need to appreciate mosquitoes in that way? Yeah. So I was spoiled during my graduate career because our lab had these very nice microscopes, and I think they're really, like, expensive, high quality ones. So imagine we're at a microscope and we have this petri dish and we have these mosquitoes that have been dried down or they've been knocked down with ice to kind of keep them from moving.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 flies. And so when you look at them close, like mosquitoes are actually distinguished by their long, slender legs and 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 razors.

Alie Ward
Jack Skellington meets anemic nineties. Supermodel meets Edward Scissormouth meets a horny vampire. In addition to that, you'll see these shiny scales. And so in my head, I'm thinking about aedes aegypti, because that is a vector or a mosquito species I work on. And you'll see scales on the wings.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 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. Their scales and so eighties of shift.

Eye 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 mosquitoes like Aedes aegypti 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 called sabathes cyanases. So it's a mosquito we commonly see in Central and South America. But if you look it up, I personally would 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 antennae and these glorious shimmers. And why does that even matter?

Alie Ward
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 Aedes isn't genus that can carry zika and yellow fever. And Aedes aegypti are those beautiful striped, like art deco black and white sparkly ones. They are day snackers on your flesh.

Now, the calix genus tends to be a little blah, 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 Nile virus, dog heartworm, and some other scaries. And if I may, they're the least interesting to look at.

Now, anopheles, 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. Anopheles, 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 2022 study, participatory approaches for raising awareness among subsistence farmers in Tanzania about the spread of insecticide resistance in 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 anopheles floats as a larva parallel to the water surface. And according to the study quote, some participants referred to aedes 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 134 year old farmer who exclaimed, oh, now I understand that not every mosquito in my house is anopheles 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 2023 study, the origin of black and white coloration of the asian tiger mosquito, chalcidologists 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, cholcidologists 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, that's great. That's great.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 lab 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, of the 3700 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.

Alie Ward
Okay, so how many mosquitoes are 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 allegiant to our own skin, right? So how many are enemies? I checked into the evidence and the accusations, aka the 2023 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 mouths.

Only 2.5% 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 9.3%, less than a 10th of mosquitoes, giving 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 the 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 dipterology episode with doctor Brian Lessert, who names flies after drag queens. Officially happy pride, by the way.

Now, for mosquitoes, we have a few distinctive features that make them mosquitoes. One, it's their mouth part. So mosquitoes have this elongated, tube like mouthpart called a proboscis, which they use to pierce the skin and extract blood. And this adaptation is unique to female mosquitoes because it's essential that they blood feed, that blood is necessary for egg development. In contrast, our common house fly have these sponge like mouthparts, which they use to sponge up liquids.

Alie Ward
Ah yes, that dipterology 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 dipterology with Doctor bry the fly guy. 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?

C
Do I not? And so what they do is if it tastes good, that's when they'll drop their proboscis, their mouth part 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 dipterology episode. And while mosquitoes are flies, we're honing in on cholcidology specifically.

Alie Ward
And according to the national institutes, yes, mosquitoes, like cow slice, can taste with their mouth, but also their feet. They love you before they even cut you. We also know that female mosquitoes, 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 and what they will feed on and their host preference at the end of the day. So according to the 2021 study, differential attraction in mosquito human interactions and implications for disease control.

Alie Ward
Some mosquitoes prefer non humans, like birds and mammals. They're zoophilic and others want mostly you. And they're androphilic but this study also found that if their preferred meal is not available, they'll take their second or third option, like ordering a patty melt when the diner is 86 don Reubens. But sometimes it's not even a goopy bird or a squirrel they want. There was this 2018 study, identification of Uranotinea safarina 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 uretonea 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. I 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 proboscis is strong ish, but, you know, reptile skin is hard.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
So I've seen videos where they've recorded the mosquito hose 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 Gremie, a dog who has a mosquito, 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 isn't a lot of fur. 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.

Alie Ward
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, a 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 2022 study observing the distribution of mosquito bites on humans to inform personal protection measures against malaria and dengue vectors, which somehow convinced four volunteers to get in a room with lab reared and disease free but starving mosquitoes from either 06:00 a.m. to noon for day biting eighties or 06:00 p.m. to midnight for night biting anopheles for 20 days. And from this blood sacrifice, we now know that the anopheles bites when the volunteer was standing up, those were almost all below the knee.

Anopheles, they like below the knee. But when these generous volunteers were lying down sleeping, they got bitten all over their damn body by the anopheles, which are night biters. Now, the day biting eighties bites were only about 50% 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 83% of bites during sleeping and at least 90% 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 this study, and I came up blank.

Other than the fact that these folks were in Tanzania and they had a vested interest, perhaps, and donating their fragile skin and blood to science for malarial prevention, since they didn't get paid for their service, I'm gonna read from the study acknowledgments which include, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to our volunteers, Moses mulagani Boniface, Megwila Baraka Kidwanga, and Ibrahim Mixkea, from me. Thank you, sirs, for withstanding that lion's den of tiny predators. Yeah, they're ruthless. They're ruthless, but they're smart. And maybe I smell 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 Ware Gilmore says. So we've seen mosquitoes thrive in habitats including temperate rainforests, tropical rainforests, urban areas. But again, you know, we're not seeing mosquitoes 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 share.

It's getting hot. Oh, right. Like right now, we might not be seeing them in the top of a nordic fjord, but give it a couple decades and who knows? Maybe there'll be a sandals resort there. Oh, yeah.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
And their logo would be like a mosquito.

Alie Ward
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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 $6 latte that got cold as soon as you stepped outside. They just hunkered down under ice.

Alie Ward
Tougher than you, no offense. And then as far as temperature plays a huge role in mosquito physiology and biology, and so temperatures need to be not perfect, but just right. So you see the emergence of the larvae into pupae and the pupae 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 mosquito lara.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
Oh, that's okay. No, 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.

Alie Ward
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 are they munching 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 had visuals. Cause there's so many good.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
There's so many departments of health and mosquito abatement groups that have beautiful visuals that they use and 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 Aedes aegypti. This is a container breeding mosquito, so it prefers to breed in man made containers that are left around.

Alie Ward
So in the 2015 study, breeding sites of Aedes aegypti, potential dengue vectors in east Ethiopia. Cholecidologists set out to see which reservoirs of water were the most attractive to expectant mosquito moms. And first off, rainwater only place. Okay. They did not prefer to lay eggs in tap water.

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 a mozzie nursery, overwhelmingly old tires, absolute darling, love obsessed. 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
This 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 parenting styles, but a lot of common mosquitoes will lay a bunch of eggs, like in a raft style, kind of in a bundle.

Alie Ward
And then when the larvae are in the water, some will be underwater using a little snorkel on their face, while other species, like the malaria carrying anopheles genus, is floating flat right under the water surface. But 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 pupae. The pupae under the microscope look like little shrek. They're like little commas with shrek ears.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
They're funny looking. And then after the pufa, 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 pupae, 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. Just like a hot smoothie choco block with fat and meat bits and protein and iron. Listen, I've never had a baby out of any hole of mine, but I have been essential to growing new life on planet earth in garbage tires.

Alie Ward
And then these babies grow up and you hate them. 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 that makes it any better.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
It does. It does. Good. Good for her. Is she eating or he eating anything else in the interim?

Alie Ward
If she's like, okay, I'm ready to nail. 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 at a water fast? Yeah, water fast, yes. So, yeah, when she's not taking a blood meal. Mosquitoes, male and female, are nectar feeders. So they're going to be using these flower resources as the sugar resource to get them by.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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?

Alie Ward
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 attracted 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 or CO2, but they're also going to be picking up signals from our sweat.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
So there are chemicals in our sweat that they can smell that make us very attractive. It smells 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 Crest 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 CO2, 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 2 billion mosquito nets have been distributed in areas hardest hit by malarial transmission.

Alie Ward
And over 7 million lives have been saved. And you can find out more@malarianomore.org dot. And thanks to sponsors of the show for making that donation possible. This podcast and my life is brought to you by Squarespace. Do you know that I didn't have a website for forever because I was putting it off because I was scared?

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That's ritual.com ologies for 25% off. Get that d 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.

Cholecidologists are all about this question. And according to the 2021 meta study, variability in human attractiveness to mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are known to find and bite humans by being attracted to carbon dioxide, lactic acid, ketones, 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 2023 paper, prevalence of malaria parasite and its effects on some hematological parameters amongst pregnant women in Nigeria, pregnant people in the advanced stages of pregnancy exhale 21% 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 ringing dinner bell, 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 like 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 in our sweat that they're picking up.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
And that's why you've probably heard this, that certain blood types are more attractive to mosquitoes. 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 of species and the time and place. I love that you have done a deep dive on this.

Alie Ward
Have so many people asked you that you're. What caused you to start looking into these papers? I. So I think early on it was like, I have type B blood. Does that make me more attractive?

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
But at the end of the day I was just like, but what is it about type B blood or whatever other blood types that are attractive to mosquitoes? 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, be it CO2, chemical cues from the sweat microbiota, or like the microbes in your sweat 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 Ware Gilmore says that altered seasonal patterns of mosquito activity can also lead to more transmission and longer transmission periods. Also increased disease risk. So climate change isn't just water levels rising on seaside cottages, 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 extrinsic 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 taken a new blood meal from an uninfected host. Okay, so that extrinsic incubation period of malaria is also called the period of spirogeny. And it describes the time it takes four parasites to develop in the mosquito from the moment they take in gametocytes, or sex cells, via a tainted blood meal.

Alie Ward
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 Mosquitoes, a 1998 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. Gross. Tell me more. And can you tell me a little bit about how the bites work? Is there a little bit of a blur 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 needlemouth have? Yeah. So I guess we can look at the mosquito mouth part as, like, six different needles.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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? Fallon. What?

Yeah, they have this very specialized mouth part that is frightening when you look at pictures up close. Six. They have six needles, including two socks. That's amazing. That makes predator, or, like, sci-Fi monsters seem, like, so simple.

Alie Ward
Okay, two. 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 capillaries, the blood vessels, or the capillaries. That's so cool. So we touched on some of the temperature work that I did previously.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
And I guess when we think about climate change, it's also just not risk of infection or increased 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 and 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 salivary glands. And then I absolutely lost my shit hearing that they have six different needles in their mouths.

Yeah. Which that's, like, absolutely blowing my mind right now. 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 mouth part, I was like, what is going on? What is this? Let's get into these twinkly, saw mouthed, tiny little blood zombie fairies. So when a female mosquito pierces the skin, she has this basically this flexible lip like sheath that goes up and it stays outside as the insect pushes in. Basically six needle like parts.

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. Yeah, they're so sharp, we don't really feel the bite, but they do enough damage. And then we have another set of needles, 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 vessels.

Alie Ward
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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 poke into the blood vessel and then. And is that kind of like a needle or is that also kind of like a saw?

Alie Ward
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 sized mosquitoes are around 6 mm 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, mosquitoes can take in anywhere from 0.001 to 0.01 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 binge drinking.

When we're talking about teen mosquitoes 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 same 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 small and how big do they get?

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
Yeah, so our biggest species of mosquito is our elephant mosquito. So toxorhynchites. And so this, he's a big fella, she's a big fella, but she, they have these tusk on them at the end of their proboscis, but they're, 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.

Alie Ward
I thought forever, like, oh, those crane flies don't worry, they eat mosquitoes. That's total horse pucky, right? Yeah. You know, it's okay because. Cause when I moved to Georgia with my family, the names for crane flies were so wild.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
It was like, mosquito, hawk. Like hawk killer. And I was like, a hawk killer. I was 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 a snack and a date, right? Yeah. I mean, he is all of us. All of us.

Alie Ward
So crane flies, neither mosquitoes nor mosquito assassins. Just lonely, big, bumbling, mosquito looking 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. So, as with most animals, size does matter.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 uranitani and then toxorhynchites. So toxorhynchides and galley nippers are quite large mosquitoes. And I think mass wise, between the smallest and the largest, it's maybe like a 60 fold mass difference. So quite big.

Alie Ward
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, Aedes mosquitoes in general are a little bit hardier, a little bit bigger than anophalines. But I will say that from my perspective, that anopheles species of mosquitoes tend to gear towards the smaller end compared to like an eighties or a Culex.

Mosquito when it comes to mating and finding a date, how are mosquitoes finding each other? Is there 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?

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 mosquitoes and it's used for communication but also mate location. And so male mosquitoes actually produce a higher frequency of sound versus females 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?

Alie Ward
Or I wonder if you hear a high, high, high pitched annoying one if that means it's a male 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
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 1000 times a second at a tremendously high frequency over 700 hz, 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 thrown in a buzz around six to 700. Ladies are a bit lower, 400 hz, but. But when they find each other and are about to mate, they are quite literally vibing.

Alie Ward
They're raising their buzz frequency in harmonics to about 1200 hertz, which is right. And like the whistle tone registers like Mariah Carey's high notes. Just two bugs just getting it on. And the males have these bushy antennae to pick up on ladies locations using 7000 sensory cells 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 fresh as hell paper from last month. Surveillance of mosquitoes 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 and 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.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
You know, hummingbirds and mosquitoes, kind of. They're fast. They're kind of sparkly. And they have that weird mouth part. Right.

Alie Ward
The tiniest hummingbirds ever. They just happen to like meat, which is you to some of them. But we have one bazillion questions from listeners, which we were not going to toss at you all at once, but can I ask some from listeners? Mm hmm. 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 zika, dengue, 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 mossy people amazing questions because it's worth the wait. Now you can follow doctor Wert Gilmore on Xifal linked in the show notes.

She's on Instagram. Oxyfall, 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 ologies on Instagram and Twitter.

I'm lieward on both. Smologies is our new spinoff 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.

Word of mouth is everything to us, so tell a friend. Ologies Merch is available@ologiesmerch.com. dot. You can become a patron@patreon.com. ologies our ologies podcast Facebook group is adminned by Erin Talbert.

Professional transcripts by Aveline Malik of the Watery 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 Chafee and lead editor who has earned her scaly mosquito stripes.

Mercedes Maitland of Maitland audio Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music, and if you stick around till 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.

I actually scratched that. His name was Tad. I'm sorry about that, Tad. First husbands always get 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 appreciated.

But anyway, 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. Pachydermatology, hometozoology, litology, nanotechnology, meteorology, nephrology, seriology.

Just the mosquitoes. They love me. Hey, parents. Greenlight is here to take one big thing off your to do list, teaching your kids about money. With a greenlight debit card and money app of their own, kids and teens learn to earn, save, and invest.

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You can send money instantly, set flexible controls, and get real time notifications of your kids money, extra activity. Set up chores and put allowance on autopilot to reward them for their hard work. Then learn about the world of money together. Get one month free when you sign up@greenlight.com. Podcast the living room is where you make life's most beautiful memories.

Fhallon Ware-Gilmore
But your sofa shouldn't be the one remembering them. The new life resistant high performance furniture collection from Ashley is designed to withstand all the spills, slip ups, and muddy paws that come with the best parts of life. Life. Ashley High performance sofas and recliners are soft, on trend, and easy to clean. Shop the high performance furniture in store online@ashley.com.

Alie Ward
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Culicidology (MOSQUITOES) Part 1 with Fhallon Ware-Gilmore

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1: Introduction and Guest Background

2: Mosquito Biology and Ecology

3: Disease Transmission and Public Health

4: Personal Protection and Prevention

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