Know Your Pest: The Menacing Asian Tiger Mosquito

The Asian tiger mosquito menace has been a long time coming. The bug hitched its way across the Pacific inside a shipment of tires from Japan to Hawaii in the late 1800s. It managed to make it to the mainland around 1985, and from there the black-and-white-striped insect spread throughout the United States, bringing disease with it. Here's what you need to know about the invaders.

Disease Carriers

"They're very good at spreading a number of viral pathogens," William Walton, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, tells PM. The insect is particularly adept at carrying West Nile virus,, St. Louis encephalitis, and Chikungunya?a virus similar to the one that causes Dengue Fever. There are no known cases of anyone becoming infected with Chikungunya in the U.S.?so far.

The tiger mosquito's penchant for carrying disease is compounded by the fact that it bites at all hours of the day. Where most mosquitoes come out around dawn and dusk, the tiger mosquito can stick it out through the midday sun.

Tough to Kill

Walton says all tiger mosquitoes need to thrive is a moist patch of soil in a flowerpot or other relatively small, enclosed container. The fact that they prefer these tight spaces with little water makes them even more difficult to find and eradicate. Although their bites aren't necessarily any more annoying than those of other species, tiger mosquitoes aren't picky about where they make their home. They like urban and rural areas alike.

So how do you get rid of this bug? "You could eliminate [the] adult population by spraying chemical pesticides," Walton says, "but the eggs would still be viable."

Unlike other species of mosquito, the tiger mosquito's eggs can dehydrate and rehydrate without harming the larvae growing within. Researchers aren't sure how long an egg can remain viable without a source of hydration, but Walton speculates that they could survive for a year or more.

Because the mosquito originally hails from the warm, wet climate in Southeast Asia, its eggs don't do well in freezing temperatures. A hard freeze will kill off many of the eggs before they have a chance to hatch when the weather warms up. But, Walton says, during an uncharacteristically mild winter like this past one, that doesn't happen. "If most survive over winter, then they get going earlier in the year," Walton says. "It's a numbers game with mosquitoes."

How to Rid Your Yard of Mosquitoes

New Defenses

In Australia, scientists are trying a few different strategies for stopping the invaders' spread by keeping the mosquitoes from colonizing new areas. They've strategically set up pesticide-laced containers to kill off tiger mosquito populations before they have the chance to reproduce.

Some scientists worry that the traps could accidentally attract and kill other, less harmful bugs. But Walton says you can mitigate those risks by putting out a mosquito-specific insecticide. Using a toxin extracted from a bacteria, researchers target tiger mosquito larvae whose digestive tracts are particularly sensitive to the toxic proteins. Even if other bugs, such as flies, ingest the poison, it's unlikely that the dose of bacterial toxin would harm them.

Other mosquito-abolishing tactics have involved breeding genetically sterilized males and then releasing them into the wild to hinder reproduction.Those methods are still in the research phase for this kind of mosquito, but the Sterile Insect Technique has been used on other bug populations around the world; it successfully eliminated the tsetse fly from Zanzibar.

For now, Walton says the best way to prevent the harmful effects of a tiger mosquito bite is not getting bitten in the first place. "It's important to educate people so they know what the deal is," he says. "Be sure to dump water that sits for more than three days. Even if [the tiger mosquitoes] aren't carrying disease, they're still a significant pest."

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