Cooler weather signals start of mosquito-free few months
Published 11:00 pm Saturday, September 22, 2012
It won’t be long and we’ll get our few months’ reprieve from mosquitoes and other unkind insects. This year has been a tough one for West Nile virus spread by mosquito bites.
Mosquito bites hurt for a reason. The critters have a mouth structure that works similar to a hypodermic needle. The sharpest pain we feel when a mosquito bites comes from a pair of barbs that anchor its mouth into the victim’s skin. Then the rest of the needle structure penetrates. Next, saliva containing an anticoagulant is pumped in to keep blood flowing.
Then a sucking process takes place with the mosquito getting leverage from the skin anchors. It’s a quick and precise deal. And the female mosquito, the only biter of the genders, does not even “eat” blood. Mosquitoes actually eat plant nectar which they collect with the same needle-mouth used for blood-sucking. Blood is used in the body of female mosquitoes to mature eggs, not for nutrition of the adult. Males have the needle mouthparts for extracting nectar since food-gathering is an individual chore.
In my opinion, the flying phlebotomist mosquitoes are not the meanest of biters. Ever been bitten by a horse fly? Now that’s pain, again for good reason.
Horse flies and their kinfolk deer flies have complicated mouthparts that include structures that operate like super sharp scissors. They actually cut the skin of horses or humans and then lap up the blood as it flows. Only the female flies are armed with the scissors. As with mosquitoes, blood is needed for reproduction, not for nutrition. Both male and female horse flies use nectar from plant blooms for food.
The nastiest of the airborne bugs that bother us has to be the housefly. This species doesn’t have oral needles or scissors to hurt mankind, womankind or kind horses. Instead, the common housefly has a sponge at the tip of its mouth structure. The fly eats by sponging its own saliva onto food and then sponging up the dissolved remains. We shoo houseflies off our picnic paper plates because they might have just come from sponging in a garbage can or barnyard. Nasty.
Now, among flying insects generally held in high regard, the butterfly has a coiled straw to ingest its food. Butterflies simply uncoil the straw-like structure and harmlessly suck nectar. Moths do the same. However, the larval stage of butterflies and moths comes with a completely different mouth structure for a different diet.
Caterpillars bite into and chew up plants for food. Rare is the butterfly species caterpillar that causes serious economic damage or food loss to humans. Conversely, numerous moth species larva do cause food and economic losses. The “worms” in fruits and vegetables and in fields of corn, wheat and cotton, as well as the ones that eat up canna lilies, bore into peach trunks and construct bags in junipers and webs in pecan trees are all moths-to-be eating their way to maturity.
Sometimes we just have to put our money where the bug mouth is.
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Terry Rector writes for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, 601-636-7679 ext. 3.