Culiseta annulata, the insect identified in the Icelandic capital.
Iceland, the last stronghold beyond Antarctica, has been invaded. Slide canceled You may not just be “on vacation”.
A Icelandconsidered the , has just detected specimens of these insects in its territory. It could be a sign of something more serious than it might seem, but it could also be a simple coincidence.
Three specimens of the species Slide canceled — two females and one male — were detected around 30 kilometers from Reykjavik, the country’s capital, entomologist Matthias Alfredsson, from the Icelandic Institute of Natural Sciences, confirmed to AFP this Wednesday. The three were caught in traps ropes soaked in winea method that uses wine heated with sugar to attract insects
All this happens shortly after Iceland beat a temperature recordin spring: for the first time it experienced more than 10 consecutive days with temperatures above 20ºC, having exceeded 26ºC in certain areas.
“I immediately realized that this was something that I had never seen it before“, wrote on social media enthusiast Bjorn Hjaltason, who found the mosquitoes in a glacial valley, quoted by the Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið: “the last stronghold seems to have fallen”.
Until then, as far as anyone knew, only Antarctica and Iceland lived 100% mosquito-free. Alfredsson guarantees that this is the first record of mosquitoes in a natural environment on the islandafter an isolated specimen of the Aedes nigripes species, typical of the Arctic, was found on a plane at Keflavik airport, but was lost in the meantime.
The insects must have recently arrived in the country, by boat or containerspeculates the researcher. Now, its presence will be monitored next spring to assess possible spread.
Global warming was practically everyone’s first suspicion, but the researcher does not believe that climate change is the (only) culprit.
The species in question is well adapted to cold climates and supports long winters with temperatures below zero degrees. In fact, it can even be found in the cold. But of course, “rising temperatures are likely to increase the potential for other mosquito species to establish themselves in Iceland, should they arrive.”
It is, therefore, possible that the Slide canceled arrived in Iceland to stay.
Tomás Guimarães, ZAP //
