The Toll of Dominion: A Natural and Cultural History of the Mosquito

The light of the fire flickers against the trees at the bottom of my in-laws’ yard, a vast wall of dancing shadows cast as backdrop to our laughter. Candles burn low on patio tables, and the night air is thick with a heavy, humid stillness that almost hums in harmony with the low electric buzzing of ultrasonic repellants. I pretend not to notice the metallic bitterness on the rim of my beer as my father-in-law douses himself in another cloud of spray, sending a coil of twisting chemicals up in lazy spirals of smoke. These are the things we do to claim a few hours outside on a summer night.

They drift between us, weightlessly sailing on invisible tides of breath and sweat hanging in the air. Moving soundlessly, they slip closer, drawn by the warmth of our breaths, the slight dampness of our skin and the cacophony of our scents in the air around us. Slap. My mother-in-law curses under her breath, shaking her hand as though it would make the sting dissipate any faster as my wife pulls her jacket over her head, balancing a glass of wine precariously between her knees.

We call them pests, as though their existence holds no purpose beyond endlessly tormenting us every summer. The air hums with their presence, a constant, whispering reminder that we are not alone; that for all our accomplishments, something smaller than a grain of rice can still make us flinch, swat and eventually drive us back into the safety of screened porches and air-conditioned homes. It’s easy to see the mosquito as nothing more than an inconvenience, a nuisance species to be driven away or exterminated. Perhaps more difficult is to imagine what they see in us; in the world we have created. To understand why they are here and why, no matter what we do about it, they always will be.

Life Begins in Water

            Long before the land was carved into roads, cities and suburbs, the Great Lakes region was a vast, humid expanse of rivers, shallow basins and still marshes. Forged by moving glaciers, and their steady retreat as temperatures rose (Williams), the silence would hum with the abundance of life, the movement of wings in the air as natural as mist rising from the glasslike stillness of the water. The life of a mosquito is a life not measured in years but in days, a brief and tireless push toward the next generation. Hesitation is a luxury not afforded to one who lives so briefly, they have no time for ambition, for want or greed. Each mosquito is born with a single, unwavering objective; the continuation of their kind.

            A female lays her eggs in the calm, standing water of a misty marsh, a practice as old as the lakes themselves and the first step in a cycle that has kept the mosquito thriving for millions of years (East End Tick Control). Hatching into the murky depths, the larvae drift and bob aimlessly just beneath the surface. They siphon nutrients from the unseen dust of life, the flourishing microscopic world of microbes that bloom in shallow pools. Even in the first hours of their existence, the mosquito knows how to make a little go a long way; a paragon of efficiency. As they grow, they shed their skins and ultimately transform into motionless, cocoon-like pupae that tumble through the water in a state of brief hibernation; frozen between life in the water and flight. Then, as the butterfly emerges from its own cocoon, the mosquito splits open her organic sleeping bag and silently breaks the surface of the water, not causing so much as a ripple in the stillness as she rises into the sunlight. The warmth dries and hardens her wings before, without practice or instruction from a parent, she instinctively takes to the sky to begin the brief and urgent business of adulthood (Michigan Mosquito Control Association).

For her male counterparts, life is simple. A few days feeding on nectar, then the long drift on the wind in search of a mate. But for her, survival demands more. She holds the very future of her kind in her tiny, delicate body; a mission she must, for the most part, complete alone. She too drinks from flowers, but to continue her line she must seek something else; blood. According to the Michigan Mosquito Control Association, “The female mosquito is solely responsible for biting; the females of most species require a blood meal for egg development” (MMCA). Like the water in which she was born, the blood is life. Its proteins are the building blocks of the next generation. It’s not greed or malice that drives her, it is necessity, the price of creation. She takes what she needs, a single drop of blood enough to birth hundreds of eggs as she rests in the sun. She lays her eggs as the mother she never knew had done for her, instinct drawing her back to the stillness of the water and then, disappearing into the mist, she dies with her objective achieved.

But the landscape changed. Rivers were rerouted, marshes were drained and the balance of nature that had held for millions of years was upended. The humans had come. There had always been a symbiotic balance between man and nature, but these new humans were different. Agriculture, industry and the birth of towns that evolved into cites and expanded across the landscape; every day demanding more space, more land. Wetlands became roads, forests became farmland and the run-off of industry crept into what water remained like an unseen serpent; poisoning the once stable communities of life in its path. The old breeding grounds faded, but the mosquito had survived extinction level events before (EETC). It would survive this new one. And in the footprint of the human invasion, they found new homes; roadside ditches, forgotten buckets, tire tracks pooled with rain. These urban adapted mosquitoes are known as artificial container mosquitoes and they “not only make use of natural tree holes but also breed in discarded tires, rain buckets, or anything that may hold water” (MMCA). As time went on, increasing human activity and advancement led to steadily rising temperatures which, according to Kelly House, directly impacted the life cycles and breeding patterns of Michigan mosquitoes. She writes, “Several disease-carrying mosquito species have been expanding into parts of the Great Lakes region where winters were historically too cold for their survival” (House). The world was changing, and if she was going to survive, the mosquito needed to change too.

Warmth, Life and the Hunt

            I love vampire stories. Not so much the ones about teenagers who twinkle in the sunlight or even street gangs on motorbikes; I’m talking about the kind you watch in black and white, cadaverous forms materializing from shadows that cling to them like ethereal robes. Eyes watching from the dark and gleaming with a sickly, predatory sheen matched only by the sunken black pits of endless hunger at their center. The bloodsucker, the haunting parasite driven to take from us in the night by an unceasing avarice, a desperate want for the lives of others, and leaving behind only an itch, an infection, a quiet lingering dread.

The image of the bloodsucker has haunted human imagination for hundreds of years. Blood is life, it is precious and it is ours. Our bodies hold blood in abundance of our need for survival and we can lose a surprising amount of it before experiencing any side effects. Writing for Healthline, Kimberly Holland says, “You’ll start to feel mild side effects… when blood loss reaches fifteen to thirty percent of total blood volume” (Holland). The mosquito has no interest in such excess, a single drop is enough to forge her future. To her eye, the world is not a network of moonlit corridors and gasping victims, but a great, pulsing map of warmth and breath. A landscape painted with plumes of carbon dioxide, webs of body heat invisible to human eye. Where we see a dimly lit summer evening, she senses the pulse of life itself.

Drawn in by this symphony of heat and breath, she lands as light as dust, a presence almost unnoticeable by her host. Her proboscis is no simple spear, but a complex biological instrument developed and refined over millennia; a collection of needle-like appendages working in perfect tandem. Some part skin while others deliver numbing elixirs to dull the senses or anticoagulants to keep the blood flowing (Hawkes). The final needle is her drinking straw, taking only what she needs; a mouthful of blood so small that its absence would never be noticed, were it not for the body’s irritated response. In that moment, she fulfils the singular purpose of her existence.

The exchange of blood for life is a symbiotic relationship going back to the time of the dinosaurs (EETC); we all remember how John Hammond created his theme park monsters in Jurassic Park, after all. One being gives a fraction of itself so that another might continue. The mosquito is not cruel, she doesn’t seek revenge like the wasp or eject a satisfying meal for the thrill of killing again like the anaconda. When her work is done, when she has taken what little she needs, she returns to the flowers to sip nectar alongside the bees and other pollinators (U.S Forest Service). For all her efficiency however, she is despised. We swat and we spray, we set traps and surround our homes with disruptive chemicals and sounds to make ourselves invisible to her sensitive eyes. We scratch bites bitterly and call her a plague-bearer for carrying parasites about which she could never be aware.

Yet if we seek a cause for the mosquito’s delicate flight into our lives, we need look no further than our homes, our infrastructure, the very scars of our own development. In a study of the effects of urbanization on mosquito behavior, Antonios Kolimenakis found, “high adult abundance was on average associated with highly anthropized habitats… both in the metropolitan and the suburban/rural areas. This is consistent with characteristics of highly anthropized habitats that favor the mosquito life cycle, such as high human population density providing more opportunities for blood feeding and larger numbers of artificial water containers” (Kolimenakis). Countless species have already fallen victim to this new world, perishing in the careless restlessness of human ambition as it conquers the world one biome at a time.

But the mosquito has seen millennia of change, countless new worlds, and she has adapted to each to ensure her survival. She thrives because she must, because the continuation of her kind is her only prerogative, she knows nothing else and she wants for nothing else. We have shaped this world to accommodate our needs but, in so doing, we have inadvertently made room for the mosquito to flourish. New breeding grounds, a new and abundant source of blood for her eggs and, while we may see our battle against them as a desperate war against a vile invader, she was here long before us. And so, with each drop of blood she takes, she does not steal but simply collects what is owed to her by her tenants.

The Invisible War

            For centuries, we have waged an unseen war against the mosquito; declaring her a scourge to be wiped from the Earth. Entire industries have risen in service of her destruction, developing chemical weapons, genetic experimentation and biological traps; all in the name of reclaiming the warm summer evenings we perceive as having been stolen from us. Indeed, if we were to succeed and the mosquito were to simply vanish overnight, she would do so without fanfare. Unlike other victims of humanity, whose absences have sent shockwaves through the ecosystem; the mosquito’s role is a minor one. Other pollinators exist, other prey for bats and birds. In fact, of the small number of species that would even notice, all would find suitable replacements in due time. Shüné Oliver writes, “We do not know of any animal that only eats mosquitoes, but there are lots of mosquitoes and they are easy to hunt, so many animals eat them… If all mosquitoes disappeared, many animals would have a lot less food. Imagine if all the rice in the world disappeared. Nobody eats only rice, but if rice disappeared tomorrow, a lot of people would have a lot less food” (Oliver). And yet, for all our cunning and ingenuity for the destruction of our enemies, the mosquito endures.

A life lived under constant attack from an enemy so relentless and hateful has made the mosquito an alchemist of adaptation. Chemicals meant to exterminate her are absorbed into her body and, if the dosage is correct, she does not simply resist but assimilates. Like the Borg or Cybermen of science fiction, she does not fear the weapons deployed against her but incorporates them; dismantling them and weaving them into the biological fabric of her design to craft an innate immunity against their deadly effects. In a study on genomic changes in the mosquito, Frederic Faucon writes, “Kdr mutations and metabolic resistance are known as the two primary resistance mechanisms in mosquitoes… Exposing mosquitoes for 1 (hour) to various doses of insecticide showed that the lethal dose killing 50% of individuals varied up to 750-fold between susceptible populations and the most resistant” (Faucon).

Once the insecticide has been extrapolated, with an efficiency unmatchable by any form of evolution on the planet, she passes on this new immunity to her offspring, allowing them to instantly inherit a biological defense network generations in the making; written directly into the code of their DNA before they even hatch. The U.S Department of Agriculture states that, “Genetics and intensive application of insecticides are responsible for the rapid development of resistance in many insects and mites. Selection by an insecticide allows some insects with resistance genes to survive and pass the resistance trait on to their offspring. The proportion of resistant insects in a population continues to increase as the susceptible insects are eliminated” (USDA). The harder we fight, the stronger she becomes and our efforts to eradicate her have turned her into a pint-sized biological superhero; absorbing our weapons and turning them into a superpower of survival.

DDT, or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, was once hailed as a miracle weapon in the war against the mosquito. Devastatingly effective and dealing death on a massive scale, the campaign ultimately failed when we discovered the poison had turned on us as well; infecting our soil, water and bodies, resulting in lost pregnancies, shortened lactation periods for new mothers and urogenital birth defects (Eskenazi). And for its short-sighted effectiveness, the mosquito survived its poisons and absorbed them into herself to craft an immunity earned not over years but months. And so, our war does not weaken her, it perfects her. She does not know what it is to be hated or to seek revenge, only that she must ensure the continuation of her species; passing on her knowledge of survival to her young as biological inheritance. What failed to kill her will never harm her children.

Such an extended campaign of war needs propaganda to support it, and long has the mosquito been branded a plague bearer, an inescapable vortex of disease and misfortune. Like Count Orlok sailing into Wisborg on a tide of rats and death, the mosquito can become a vessel for things she cannot possibly understand. Malaria, Dengue, West Nile Virus, as she feeds, she unknowingly invites these unseen biological hitchhikers into her body and carries them far beyond their own natural reach. (MMCA) These parasites spread ruin, hijacking her singular quest for survival and using it to cause over a million human deaths each year and infecting millions more. Since we cannot see our true enemies, we paint the mosquito as the agent of ruin, a remorseless harbinger of death, but she cannot know these diseases any more than a mailman delivering a parcel of anthrax or a storm cloud carrying the lightning that will burn a home to the ground. She is merely a vessel, blind to the weight of what she carries and driven only by the same simple need that has guided her kind for millions of years.

A Different Approach

It’s easy to think of the mosquito as nature’s villain, a winged plague-bearer slipping through our defenses to leave behind sickness in exchange for blood. But nature is seldom simple. For all the misery and death she unknowingly inflicts, there is one disease she cannot carry, one plague she is incapable of spreading. In a strange twist of nature’s design, the mosquito is also the destroyer of the HIV/AIDS virus, utterly obliterating it within her body before it can take hold or be passed on. According to the Central Massachusetts Mosquito Control Project, the infection in the blood is distinguished and consumed as food, making cross contamination between hosts impossible due to the missing parasites needed to transmit disease from one person to another (CMMCP). For all the ire she experiences, the mosquito has developed a biological defense mechanism that is the envy of humans everywhere, making her immune to the most feared of man’s plagues. Perhaps a deeper understanding of what makes the mosquito unique would unlock new potential for humans in their struggle against this plague.

The unique biological make-up of the mosquito and her ability to pass on her remarkable adaptations to her young makes for a tantalizing blueprint for scientists. Her adaptive superpower makes her body a living laboratory where the very mechanisms of survival and evolution can be harnessed. For all our efforts, the mosquito has made clear her intention to remain, to endure and to continue; so, what if we take a chance on a new path? What if instead of an endless, costly and ultimately futile campaign of extermination, we extend the olive branch of peace? What if instead of fighting the mosquito, we allow her to help us heal?

Scientists at the World Mosquito Program have turned to an unlikely ally in this endeavor in the common bacteria Wolbachia. Harmless and naturally occurring in many varieties of insects, this bacterium acts like a microscopic shield, disrupting the cellular pathways in the mosquito that parasites use to spread disease and preventing the spread. The process is complex, but by infecting mosquito eggs with the bacterium, entire generations are born carrying the disease-disrupting Wolbachia, which they will naturally pass onto their young as part of their ingenious generational adaptive ability. When an uninfected male mates with an infected female, every egg laid by the female will carry Wolbachia and the same is true if both the male and female are infected (WMP). With the next generation born carrying the bacterium, instead of spreading disease they begin to passively spread the antidote; reducing the number of mosquito-borne infections in humans every year. The more Wolbachia infected mosquitoes released, the more mosquitoes will be born already carrying the upgrade, eventually spreading to the entire mosquito population of an area.

We have spent lifetimes attempting to eradicate the mosquito but, through Wolbachia, there is finally another path. One that does not seek destruction, but coexistence and balance. The mosquito will go on, completely ignorant to the change we have made to her biology and driven to spread it by her own insatiable need to survive and continue. The song of her wings will continue to rise from the waters of a warm summer’s day as she thrives in the new places we have created for her in our development, but she would no longer be a harbinger of death. Her bite would still irritate our skin but the sickness it once carried with it would be gone. And without the threat of innate disease, our campaign of eradication would no longer feel necessary, opening the way to a new future. A future where we do not seek to crush the mosquito under our palms, but let her fly on, altered but alive; no longer our enemy but our ally in a new war against disease.

However, even this remarkable development, the dream of a future in coexistence with the mosquito, provides a new opportunity for cruelty. Wolbachia is a tool to build this future, but it also has the potential of a biological superweapon in our misguided quest for total annihilation of the mosquito. Should an infected male mate with an uninfected female, the results are catastrophic for the couple; resulting in entire batches of eggs that will never hatch, young that will never take flight in the summer air. Entire generations and bloodlines as old as the Jurassic wiped out in a single mating. American laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that are breeding Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes do away with the disease-halting females and release only the males into the area; males who have a fifty-fifty chance of either spreading the bacterium or killing their young in their eggs (CDC). What began as an effort to reimagine the mosquito into an ally has, in human hands, become another attempt at a quiet culling of her kind. A perverse form of purity ecology, a cruel development in yet another skirmish of the ongoing invisible war.

The Cycle of Survival

The mosquito does not know greed, or pride, or ambition. She does not hunger for conquest or revel in the suffering she spreads without intent. She did not choose to become our enemy; she knows only survival and in this she is perfect. A masterpiece of nature, a biological superhero honed by time into a master of efficiency, adaptation and assimilation. She was here long before we crawled out of our caves and sought dominion of the Earth. She has flexed her wings over the alien landscapes of our ancient past and drawn blood from monstrous titans long since turned to stone. She has survived extinction level events, endured ice ages, droughts, floods and the rise of man; and she has changed herself to adapt to each new world as it emerged.

In our hubris, we have created the latest new world in which she has thrived. In clearing the forests, draining the wetlands and carving our cities into the Earth, we have not driven her away as we have so many others; we have drawn her in. She is a child of the Anthropocene, a manifestation of a natural world resisting our influence, a line before us in the sand saying, “this far and no further.” In our war to destroy her, we have made her stronger. We attack and she evolves, we alter genes and spread nullifying bacteria, reshaping her entire species in the hope that she will finally vanish from the warm summer evening air; and she endures. Because she must. We do not research her to understand or to coexist, but to destroy because, for all our power, we cannot tolerate even the smallest loss of control over the natural world. The slightest inconvenience. The tiniest loss of something we deem ours.

The redirection of the mosquito to drink our blood over that of other animals was not a choice made for taste or out of malice. The spread of disease-bearing mosquitoes to American shores was not an accident of nature. She was carried in the hulls of slave ships, sailing on the tide of human cruelty to a new frontier of opportunity; the unseen luggage of those who never chose to make that terrible voyage (Willoughby). The same deforestation, urban sprawl and warming climate that have unmade entire species brought her into our lives and for all our ire, she does not even know that we hate her. She follows us because we have given her no other choice. She is not an invader, not our enemy, but our shadow.

She is the sum of our choices, the echo of every forest levelled, every biome uprooted and unbalanced in our hunger for more. Her efficiency to make so much of so little and her restraint to take only what she needs to ensure her survival openly mocks our lifestyles of excess and greed; our unquenchable avarice and want for more. She is not a monster, watching us from the darkness with envy in her eyes, she knows nothing of vengeance or malice and she does not hate us as we hate her. In truth, she doesn’t even really know what we are. She simply survives because she must, because we have made a world in which she cannot do otherwise.

The mosquito is not a pest to be eradicated, she is consequence. She is a winged reckoning of a world reshaped by man, thriving in the scars we have left behind us. As long as we continue, so too will she; drifting in our shadows, her wings humming in the night, waiting for what she is owed. The cost of our dominion over nature is a toll measured in acres lost, in species eradicated and in wilderness tamed, but there is another price. A fee paid not in coin, not in land, but in blood. Every bite is a whisper of that debt, a small but persistent reminder that it will never be satisfied, never be fully paid off. Perhaps that is why we hate her, why we must hate her and why we have dedicated such efforts to her extermination. Not for what she is, but for what her very existence reveals about ourselves.

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