2024-04-12 09:07:53
This year spring started with a lot of warmth and humidity. This has annoying consequences: the mosquito season starts much earlier than usual.
Mosquito season starts particularly early this year. Forest and meadow mosquitoes are already hatching, as Doreen Werner from the Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg told the German Press Agency. And house mosquitoes that overwinter in frost-free places have already laid their eggs. The early start of the mosquito season is due to the weather, and this often only happens at the beginning of May. “It’s all three or four weeks earlier this year.”
Mosquitoes need it moist and warm, said Werner. “Things are going well for the mosquitoes at the moment.” The population maximum is usually reached in August, but an exact prediction is difficult. Dryness and drought harmed the mosquito population; even when it is cold, the larvae do not develop as quickly. “When it’s cold and dry, nothing works anymore.”
Mosquitoes also serve a purpose
Werner is also involved in the Mosquito Atlas: In the citizen science project, citizens can help collect scientifically usable data by sending in mosquitoes. For example, data is also collected on the Asian tiger mosquito, a species of mosquito introduced from warmer regions that has now become established in some regions of Germany.
Even though mosquitoes annoy many people, the insects and their larvae are an important part of the food web, for example for songbirds, as the German Nature Conservation Association (Nabu) emphasizes. Spiders, fish, amphibians and dragonflies also rely on the presence of mosquitoes. A disappearance of mosquitoes from the ecosystem would have serious consequences for a large number of animals.