How to beat mosquitoes

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1:17Mosquitoes are definitely one of the most frustrating parts of summer. I went camping for a weekend and came back with 200 mosquito bites. Mosquitoes love me. Whatever it is that they're into, I've got it, unfortunately.

1:33Jonquilyn Hill:I want you to close your eyes and imagine a perfect summer girls' night out. It's dusk. You assemble your crew and you hit up the ultimate cookout. You avoid the grill. You don't really want all that smoke in your face. But the food really starts calling your name. And what a spread. You gorge yourself on a delicious meal and then hate to diet and dash, but hey, you got what you needed and you are off to the next spot. That is the perfect Saturday night for a mosquito. mosquito. These bloodthirsty insects are more than an annoyance that feast on your ankles. Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet.

2:19Jonquilyn Hill:I'm John Glyn Hill, and this week on Explain It to Me from Vox, we're trying to swat away our mosquito problem for good.

2:32Jonquilyn Hill:Every summer, I'm reminded just how much mosquitoes love me. They also love Sonia Swiger. She's an etymologist at Texas A &M, where she specializes in bugs that bite us. Well, you know, I don't know why they like me so much. I know why they like people in general. One of the main reasons is because of the CO2 we put off. Ooh, what do we have here? Your body temperature, whether or not you're a living host that they can get blood from, that's important. Okay, they're alive. Check. They also do like colors. They have found that they do have a preference for more flowery colors, actually, right? So more like the pinks and the blues and things like that.

3:15Ooh, I love butter yellow. They have found, which is this is a fun one, that if you consume alcohol, that actually makes you more attractive. Actually, it was a study done with beer. So as folks, you know, took in some more beer at their parties, they actually became more attractive. Okay, well, this one's got something going on. They've also had some studies where the mosquitoes have become used to smells that they're associated with, such in urban areas. You know, there are certain smells that are always in that region. And the mosquitoes, which it was the Aedes aegypti mosquito, actually preferred people who came from that area as opposed to other people that they may be encountering.

3:57So it's kind of interesting to think that mosquitoes would have that much common sense, I guess, in a way, right? I know.

4:03Jonquilyn Hill:Not that they have a preferred flavor of human being. Like, oh my gosh.

4:12Jonquilyn Hill:So what are mosquitoes doing exactly when they bite us? Like, what are the mechanics and what are they trying to get? We refer to it as a blood meal, but it's not necessarily a meal. It's not a food source. But it's a necessity in order for them to produce eggs. So the female is going to, again, sense the host that she's looking for based on her factors that she's in tune to. And once she finds the ability to probe, she will eventually then address it with her proboscis is made up of different features. And then the internal part is what she actually will bite us with. So they'll actually unsheathe that and start to force the inner part of their mouth parts into our skin.

4:55In the process of doing that, they're also going to spit saliva into us. Yes. And the reasons they do that have many purposes. One is because they don't want us to know that we're getting bit. So they're going to spit in us with the saliva. They're going to put in some materials that also anesthetize that biting. That'll also slow the flow rate of the blood because that's, you know, they're trying to drink it. They don't want it to come flying out on them like a fire hose. They need to regulate that. Unfortunately, though, when they're doing that in the saliva, they're also spitting pathogens into us if they have them.

5:29Some of our larger mosquitoes are not as friendly when they bite us. they may actually hurt. They don't always choose to be polite about it. So we're all aware of those ones for sure.

5:40Jonquilyn Hill:How soon after I get bitten does my skin start to swell up? Does that bump start? Well, that depends on a person. Some people react immediately and then some people will react later. Like it could be an hour, half hour, the next day, 24 hours or even a day or two. And then And there's people who have no reaction whatsoever. So unfortunately, there's no set answer to that because everybody reacts differently. I think I'm personally, I'm more of a like second level. I'll react usually within 30 minutes of a bite, but it's not common. I react instantly. But my mother, she's an instant reactor, right?

6:20So the minute she's bitten by something, she gets a welt, she gets a hive, and she knows it. So it does vary. And then it also changes because your amount of exposure can change your reaction as well. I think probably in my 30s, I just stopped reacting to them. So when I get bitten now, they still bite me. But instead of getting a raised, itchy bump, I just get a tiny little spot that doesn't itch at all. So I guess I've built up a tolerance to mosquito venom over the years. Some people can get bit constantly and constantly react to it and they get more severe reactions to it. And then some people can get bit frequently and eventually not notice.

7:04It will actually deplete those reactions. So again, there's no set this is how it's going to be. It really just depends on how you as a person will react to those bites. And those bites are not exclusive across the lines for all biting insects either. So there's variability in that as well.

7:25Jonquilyn Hill:You said mosquitoes love you. So I have to know, as an etymologist, what do you use to keep them away? I just stick with deep because that's always worked for me. So and generally it's easier to access to if you do try some others. There are a few others out there. So like percaridin is another good one, as long as you don't have a reaction to it. Because, again, some people do react to different chemicals. It's nothing against the chemical. It's just the way our bodies react. Um, there's oil, lemon eucalyptus, which is a natural product that's been approved and tested. But the caveat with that is it's not labeled for children.

8:02Um, so we do have to be careful of that. Um, obviously you want something that is as good as, or as close to as good as deep, because it has been found to technically be, I guess, the gold standard. They've not really found anything much more effective than that, but they can definitely get equivalent to it.

8:17Jonquilyn Hill:I have tried all types of things. There were these, I remember one year, there were like these bracelets that it was like, They're going to keep mosquitoes away. And I was like, well, doesn't hurt. Or, you know, citronella candles when you're out on someone's patio. Do those things do anything? Yeah, I know the bracelets were definitely not found to be as effective as they claimed. Plus they did, because they did have some type of a chemical in them, if they stayed on children too long, they actually could cause a chemical burn. So, you know, as a mom, I was like, no, no, we're not going to go that route.

8:50So I was like, let's not do that. The candles are limited. When you're outside and you want books gone, now there's an off that you don't put on. It depends on the size of the space and how close you sit to the candle. So the candle and the citronella does have an effect, but how far does it expand is the question. How many do you really need to do the job you're asking it to do is kind of where you run into an issue there. So you may find better results by using something different.

9:21Jonquilyn Hill:What do you do for post-bite remedies?

9:28I'm a just deal with that kind of person, to be honest. So I'm a true entomologist. I don't kill much and I just deal with it. But, you know, there are good products nowadays that you can get for anti-itch. I would suggest that, you know, you hear all these different remedies. Putting ice on it, sure, that just soothes that initial bite. maybe that calms the skin. That's really what you're trying to do. You're trying to calm your body's reaction to the bite itself and really just trying to trick the skin into realizing it's okay.

10:05Mosquitoes need to be managed. I didn't intend to be an entomologist to kill insects. That wasn't my intention. Actually, my research, I didn't kill any. But because of the betterment of society, sometimes we do have to interfere and we do need to play our role. There are certain individuals in those populations that are more heavily impacted, and they're generally going to be the elderly or the young, right? And we want to protect every generation that we can.

10:34Jonquilyn Hill:There's a real imperative to try to curb the mosquito problem. Up next, we're headed to the lab.

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12:32Jonquilyn Hill:This is Explain It To Me. I'm JQ. One way to protect yourself against mosquito bites is to get them at the source. Make sure they can't lay their eggs in standing water. But the life cycle of a mosquito is short. Just a month max, which means they're going to keep coming back. So researchers are trying all sorts of ways to neutralize the mosquito. My name's Eric Carragata. I'm an assistant professor of mosquito-microbe interactions working out of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, and that's part of the University of Florida. I mean, there's actually some incredibly beautiful mosquitoes.

13:15So if you look for photos of pretty mosquitoes, you'll see they're all different types. Some of them are iridescent, some of them have sort of plumes on their legs, and they kind of look like dancers. But I guess my favorite is probably the Aedes aegypti, because that's the first organism I ever studied. If we take a step back and think of mosquitoes as a whole, there's more than 3 ,700 described mosquito species.

13:47Jonquilyn Hill:Wow. Okay. Did not realize there were that many. There's so many and there's probably a lot that have not been described by science as well. But most of those, in fact, the vast majority of those species don't actually bite people, which means they aren't responsible for spreading disease. It took centuries for us to actually figure out that certain diseases were caused by mosquitoes and then not caused by mosquitoes directly, but caused by pathogens spread by mosquitoes. Beyond that, the world is a big place. And how do you find everywhere where those target mosquito species are actually breeding and laying their eggs and developing?

14:32It's really, really complicated. The next issue is this problem of insecticide resistance. So for decades, we've performed chemical management of mosquito populations, but we're now seeing that that is less effective than it used to be because mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the more commonly used chemicals. We have been seeing some increased accounts of insecticide resistance in the West Nile vectors across the country. They say as we spray more, the more mosquitoes are exposed to pesticides. And in turn, there's more resistance to those pesticides. And with a warming climate, winters may not stop the spread.

15:16So we now have populations of mosquitoes all over the world that are resistant to these chemicals and sometimes multiple chemicals.

15:27Jonquilyn Hill:Eric actually thinks it may be possible for humans and mosquitoes to live in greater harmony. with a little help from genetic modification. Genetic control of mosquitoes is an old idea, but one that's grown in interest in the research community over the last couple of decades. We can sort of simplify it down to two categories. The first is called population replacement, And the idea there is that you pick a target mosquito population and modify its genetics to immunize it against pathogens of interest. That approach, the replacement, it's really still in the laboratory testing phase. The second option is called population suppression.

16:23And there, the goal is the same as using chemical insecticides. We want to reduce mosquito numbers so that there's fewer of them to bite us.

16:35Jonquilyn Hill:Google just announced its own mosquito-fighting experiment. Google's health research project called DEBUG is asking for permission to release up to 32 million male mosquitoes in Florida and California over the next two years. The initiative is aimed at reducing disease-carrying mosquito populations by introducing sterile mosquitoes that can eliminate the spread of illnesses like dengue fever and Zika. They're basically trying to sterilize mosquitoes, right? Walk me through what's going on here. Sure. So to do that, we want to take a step back and introduce people to Wolbachia, the bacterium that's part of the Google strategy.

17:18So Wolbachia, it's a very common bacterial endosymbiont in insects. Google has taken Wolbachia from a donor mosquito, and then using very small needles, they perform this procedure called embryonic microinjection. So they have purified Wolbachia cells, they put it in the needle, they get freshly laid mosquito eggs from the target mosquito species, and they inject the Wolbachia into those eggs. The mosquitoes that are injected develop, and if they survive, they might harbor a stable Wolbachia infection. Google's Wolbachia strategy is population suppression. So again, that means they're trying to reduce the number of mosquitoes in a target population.

18:11So they release male mosquitoes, and they go out into nature and they find and mate with wild female mosquitoes. And basically it makes Wolbachia-infected insects incompatible with uninfected insects. So when these Wolbachia-carrying males mate with uninfected females, none of the progeny hatches. So we say their eggs are inviolable. and because google is releasing a lot of males into the area they saturate the area with these males and on that scale how it works is that basically there's fewer surviving larvae in the next generation and if they keep releasing males over the next few weeks or two to three months, hopefully there's really large suppression effects.

19:10So we're talking removing 90 to 95 % of the mosquito population in that area.

19:17Jonquilyn Hill:Okay, that's the hope, but does this strategy actually work? At the moment, this suppression approach with Wolbachia is quite widely utilized in the world. So there's been some very successful examples of this type of program working to control other mosquito species in countries like China and Singapore. Authorities are expanding Project Wolbachia to reach some 800 ,000 households by 2026. So our stock colony produces about 24 million eggs a week. We release about 5 million males out into the field. In Singapore, they've just had a study published that really demonstrates they're cutting the risk of dengue infection in the areas where they use Wolbachia-based suppression to control Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

20:10Jonquilyn Hill:Wow. So how long will it take for Google to fix our mosquito problem over here in the U.S.? Well, at the moment, Google's not been approved to release these mosquitoes. And it might take potentially years to get that approval and to roll out the technology. What would the ideal relationship between human and mosquitoes look like, you think? What's the goal? It's going to vary from place to place. I can't come in and tell everyone in the world to do things the Eric way, even when it comes to mosquitoes. Local community groups and stakeholders need to decide what's right for them. So it might be that they are removing specific mosquito species from around where they live, if that's possible.

21:01Or it might be that they are taking a replacement approach and immunizing those mosquito populations. So we really want to have lots of options available to people so that we can present solutions that are right for specific segments of every community.