Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes

Since 1986, Colorado State professor Chester Moore, an infectious disease researcher, has kept a database of incidents of mosquitoes in an effort to ensure that new diseases don’t become a threat to the United States. The database monitors invasions of mosquitoes, often the result of the tiny insect stowing away on imported goods. It may not sound like a significant job until one considers the perspective that mosquitoes infect one billion people and countless animals around the globe each year with diseases and cause millions of deaths. There are more than 3,000 varieties of mosquitoes in the world. Only about 150 of them are native to the United States, yet only a few species carry and transmit certain infectious diseases, and an invasion of non-native mosquitoes can open up a new population to an infectious disease that hasn’t been established in that area or country before.