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Date Published: 05/05/2020

ARCHIVED - Murcian town halls step up spraying against the tiger mosquito

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

Empty holiday properties have provided perfect breeding grounds for mosquitos this spring

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Murcian town halls step up spraying against the tiger mosquito

Images: Totana town hall beginning spraying on Monday

An unexpected side-effect of the Covid-19 crisis has been a proliferation in the number of mosquitos this spring, the combination of abundant rain and empty properties creating perfect breeding grounds for these unwanted pests.

This year several of our town halls have begun intensive spraying in two phases, first with a larvicide and secondly with an insecticide, hoping to limit what is widely expected to be a population explosion due to the conditions established by the Covid crisis.

The principal problem for municipal services is that second home- owners have not been permitted to visit their second residences for nearly two months and undertake even the most basic of maintenance tasks.

None of us had any warning that we were about to be put into a lockdown situation, so nobody owning a second home had turned buckets upside-down or checked that no containers had been left outside in which water could accumulate, and after a sustained period of rain, nobody has been able to do all those little “post-rain jobs” which help to limit the breeding grounds made available for mosquitos such as empty out flowerpot saucers or the dog water bowl that was left outside for the weekend visit that didn´t happen.

Of course, there are also larger containers such as empty swimming pools which are perfect for a veritable mosquito soup to occur, and as the weather warms up municipal services have been out spraying not only riverbanks and other areas in which mosquitos habitually breed, but also residential areas in which there are many second properties.

This is the case in the Murcia city municipality, as the outlying “huerta zones” which are filled with rural gardens and agricultural cultivation are also very popular with weekend visitors, as of course, are rural cottages in the Ricote valley and along the banks of the River Segura.

Murcia city council says that 80% of the focal points of tiger mosquito infestation are found in privately owned residential or second homes.

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Murcian town halls step up spraying against the tiger mosquito

Unfortunately the tiger mosquito is becoming well-established in many areas of the region and councils on the shores of the Mar Menor, including Los Alcázares, Cartagena and san Pedro del Pinatar have recently announced spraying activity has begun, as well as other inland areas; the images on the article have come from Totana council who announced today that they were beginning to spray against the tiger mosquito this week.

More about the tiger mosquito

Last summer the Public Health department reported that larvae of the Aedes albopictus species had been found in 31 of the 45 municipalities in Murcia, just 14 years after the insect was first sighted in Spain, in the region of Catalunya, and this is the only species in the country capable of transmitting dengue to humans.

It is widely accepted that it is practically impossible to eliminate the invasive insect species from Murcia.

This mosquito is particularly bothersome as it feeds during the day and is known as the forest day mosquito in some areas of Asia for this specific reason. The males feed on nectar and plant juices, but the females require blood in order to develop their eggs and will bite human hosts more than once.

Their bite is not noticeably different to that of other mosquito species, but they will bite multiple hosts including species of birds and mammals, which is why they are viewed as being more dangerous than other mosquitoes as they can transmit disease through this process, the technical phraseology for this being that the mosquito acts as a bridge vector for pathogens which can jump species boundaries( ie from one species to another).

Control of Tiger Mosquito populations

The tiger mosquito season normally lasts from May until September or October in Spain, although the peak month here is July, and breeding will take place near water. Water is an essential element of the larval development process, and as the Asian Tiger Mosquito has a relatively short flight range of only 200 metres, this means the areas where it is most widely found are near to a water source of some kind.

The female lays her eggs close to water, not directly in it, but only requires a tiny amount of water in which larval development can take place, so can easily breed in as little as an ounce of water.

The normal process is to lay her eggs just above the water line in a container or location where water pools: when it rains the eggs are covered with water and hatch, hence the most effective means of control is to ensure water is cleared away quickly after rain.

Although it can breed in running water, this is rare, and it prefers small pools of stagnant water. These are often found near to humans in artificial containers such as discarded water bottles, animal water buckets or drinking bowls, or containers filled for watering purposes which have not been sealed.

It also loves swimming pools which have not been emptied and left to go green. It’s quite common for households to find some sort of container beneath foliage in the corner of the garden which has filled with rain during a Winter storm and has remained damp enough for nesting, so for this reason it is possible for all of us to take some simple steps to help combat the spread of the species in Spain.

It takes 10-14 days for adult mosquitos to emerge from pupae.

It is “almost impossible” to completely eradicate the mosquito, according to specialists, but the population can be held in check.

Among the measures recommended are the following:

- Don’t leave excess water standing in saucers after watering pot plants or put fine sand in the saucers to prevent eggs being laid

- Flush water through drains at least once a week

- Constantly empty, wash and re-fill pets’ drinking bowls or animal water troughs

- Check sagging drains, guttering, pipes or locations in which water could collect

- Avoid leaving stagnant water of any sort in the garden as it is a breeding ground, so check tyres lying outside which could contain water after a storm( the mosquito is believed to have arrived in the US inside tyres), pots, containers as even the smallest can be an attractive breeding ground for this and other types of mosquito.

- Empty unused swimming pools, ponds, wheelbarrows and buckets

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