When we think about animals that are affected by light pollution, we would immediately think of common nocturnal animals like bats right… I would never thought of MOSQUITOES!!

It seems that artificial lighting influence mosquitoes’ biting behaviour. According to the experiment conducted by the University of Notre Dame (2020), mosquitoes biting behaviour is increased in the night despite the fact that it has a more active biting behaviour during the day. This discovery is of concern because it can lead to higher transmission and occurrences of of illnesses and diseases like dengue fever, zika, etc.

However, I am skeptical of the generalizability of such findings. This is because the experiment was conducted only on one of the author’s of the study where he allowed mosquitoes to his arms in controlled conditions (night and day, with and without artificial lighting) (University of Notre Dame, 2020). Such a limited sample size surely can’t be very reliable, can it? Definitely, they would need to expand their research regarding the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes by including more various variables and factors, such as intensity of artificial lighting, and also expanding their sample size for observing the biting behaviour of mosquitoes.

 

References

University of Notre Dame (2020) Available at: https://news.nd.edu/news/light-pollution-may-increase-biting-behavior-at-night-in-aedes-aegypti-mosquitoes/

University of Cambridge (n.s.) Available at: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/a-very-personal-perspective-on-dengue-fever [image]

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