Let's get ready to live with mosquitoes all year round. In the era of climate change, this risk is becoming increasingly concrete in Italy. In Rome, for example, the Municipality plans to bring forward the disinfestation campaign against the larvae. “A choice that has a logic – Augusto Scirocchi, an expert in mosquitoes and specialized in medical entomology, tells Adnkronos Health -. In the capital the tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) is supplanting the more common Culex pipiens and is colonizing environments different from those original. An example is the cemeteries, where the flower pots become full of larvae and, while previously you didn't get stung because the Culex came out in the evening, today however with the tiger the risk is there all day long. But the same goes this applies to road manholes, drains, nurseries and terraces, which can give rise to small outbreaks”. We therefore need a precautionary measure against the risk of Dengue which has already seen several outbreaks in Lazio.
Scirocchi specifies that the 'old' Culex mosquitoes could also appear in winter in past years. “But in some places – he recalls – for example flooded basements, elevator shafts or cellars, where there is humidity and the presence of stagnant water. When winter arrives these adult insects face the season in diapausea state in which the organism goes into a kind of 'hibernation', it does not move and does not feed. Then they resume activity with the arrival of mild temperatures. The Tiger disappeared completely during the winter. Today we find that this type of mosquito is starting to enter homes, with an adaptation in reverse, biting inside the home and no longer outside. They too – Scirocchi continues – were diapausing. But with the increase in temperatures and without a real winter, this 'pause' is missing and we can encounter them even in the middle of winter. The Tiger is adapting to a climate that is not its own, which would be the tropical one, and it is doing it quickly ”
“Insects do not have their own body temperature governed by their organism but this process is dominated by environmental conditions – specifies the expert -. Maybe they don't move and they don't bite, but the risk today is that there is a 'breeding' of mosquitoes tiger inside the house always in the places mentioned above”. How do we defend ourselves? “With the disinfestation of the larvae – concludes Scirocchi – the clouds of droplets must reach the mosquito larvae, killing them. Only in this way are the adult mosquitoes eliminated which will then infest the environment”.
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