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Mosquitoes discovered in Iceland for the first time
- Havoc 1y agoHaving been seeing unseasonal ones in London too as of late
- pfdietz 1y agoHistorically there was malaria in southern England up to Victorian times.
- abstractspoon 1y agoGetting more in the middle of winter in NSW Australia too
- lazyeye 1y agoNever understood how mosquitos could survive the sub-zero temperatures of an Alaskan winter for example.
- ceejayoz 1y agohttps://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/how-mosquitoes-overwinter-alaska https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/how-mosquitoe... TL;DR: Eggs and glycerol.
- astrobe_ 1y agoInsects are more resilient than mammals in many ways. For instance, radioresistance [1]. Plus fast, quantity-oriented breeding cycles that makes them more reactive to changes in the environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioresistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioresistance
- behnamoh 1y agoWhat's the average life span of mosquitoes? Assuming the climate in Iceland has become warm enough for them to survive there, how did they get there in the first place? Is the atmosphere just full of insect eggs?
- dmicah 1y agoThey probably hitched a ride on human travel. The article says "It’s unclear how the mosquito arrived in Iceland, but theories include the possibility it came via ships or containers."
- pixl97 1y agoStagnant fresh water in a ship most likely.
- axus 1y agoIsn't Iceland the green island, and Greenland the icy one?
- lenerdenator 1y agoI went to Iceland for a trip in very late December. It's decidedly not green in winter.
- bonzini 1y agoTomorrow is going to be the first snowy day in Reykjavik this year.
- BaardFigur 1y agoIceland is plenty icy enough on its own. Lots of glaciers. But instead of covering 99% of the island, like Greenland, it's just a significant portion of it, instead. Also the weather there isn't particularly warm or great, even if it's more hospitable than Greenland
- tokai 1y agoIceland is more of a black stony desert.
- dec0dedab0de 1y agoThe species in the article is already adapted to cold weather. They will find out in the spring if it is adapted well enough to survive the icelandic winter It is remarkable this is the first time mosquitos have been found in the wild in Iceland though. Even if they died out in the winter, you would expect some to hide in shipping containers and lay eggs all summer. Which is how we got Tiger Mosquitos in New Jersey, and now it doesn't get cold enough to kill them and it is so much worse than it used to be.
- macintux 1y agoDup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45675851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45675851 (56 comments)
- stackedinserter 1y agoI'm surprised that happened this year, with all those ships and travel. Mosquitos couldn't grasp hiding on cargo ships until now?
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoCould also be that mosquitos always managed to hitch a ride, but in so small numbers that they disappeared relatively quickly once they arrived, or it simply was too cold but some always appeared. But now when it's a bit warmer, the same amount arrives but more survive.
- whycome 1y agoAlso, more time for succeeding populations to have mutations that have better adapted to even the colder climate.
- James_K 1y agoIn order to produce a breeding population, several mosquitoes need to hitch a ride on the same ship and stay close enough together that they can mate after arriving. They also need to survive the trip over without that much food. I imagine its quite unlikely.
- nobodyandproud 1y agoStrong disagree. One auto tire with a few cups of stagnant water can easily have dozens of larvae. On an entire ship? Probably hundreds of dozens.
- lithocarpus 1y agoBirds can carry insects or their eggs all over the place too.
- mooops 1y agoLikely human introduction. Far from being an isolated case: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64446-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64446-3
- bookofjoe 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661865
- szundi 1y ago[dead]
- I_dream_of_Geni 1y agoFinally, Iceland can feel our pain....
- lepicz 1y agothey have their own pain - there are those different mosquitoes, that tries to enter your every orifice. eyes, ears, nose, urethra. very annoying. after long journey we arrived into the camp. we wondered why we were the only ones there, so we got out of the car and there they were. a lot of them. that was the fastest i ever built a tent and we jumped in it and called it an early night :)
- rootusrootus 1y agoI am surprised that I should be surprised. Aren't mosquitoes a well known nuisance in Greenland, which despite the name is colder than Iceland? I would have expected that mosquitos in Iceland were also entirely normal. TIL.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoGreenland is pretty close to the main body of North America, they would only need to traverse 30 miles of water to get there. Whereas Iceland is about 200 miles from the closest point in Greenland.
- fluoridation 1y agoNot sure Ellesmere Island counts as part of the main body of NA. If you exclude the Northern edge of Greenland, which also the most hostile I would assume, Greenland is about as close to NA as to Iceland.
- ant6n 1y agoActually there’s a land border between Canada and Greenland.
- j_bum 1y agoThis travel blog was posted a bit ago on HN [0]. Much of the nature of Greenland was a shock for me to learn about, including the severe mosquitos. [0] https://matduggan.com/greenland-is-a-beautiful-nightmare/ https://matduggan.com/greenland-is-a-beautiful-nightmare/
- ant6n 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45396754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45396754
- ljf 1y agoMidges and mosquitos are different things. And biting midges have only been in Iceland for 10 years or so. https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland-marks-ten-years-of-biting-midges https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland-marks-ten-years-o...
- dinkblam 1y agoMosquitoes, Snakes & Jellyfish. Everyone else is welcome to live long & prosper but those 3 we should just remove from our planet...
- lukan 1y agoTicks are sometimes more annoying and way less ecological useful. (without mosquitos for example there would be way less birds, bats, ...)
- jvanderbot 1y agoLots and lots of delicious ground-dwelling birds eat ticks (Turkey, Chicken, Quail), but they'd figure something else out.
- lukan 1y agoBut not as their main source of food as far as I know. Bugs, worms and spiders are way bigger and more common.
- acdha 1y agoI’ve seen researchers suggesting that mosquitoes aren’t a big enough part of anything’s diet to be missed: https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a
- cultofmetatron 1y agothere's a large amount of endangered and critically important species for which the strongest reason the general public accepts for why we should accommodate them is "they eat X in mosquitos every night"
- charliebwrites 1y agoWhat are those species?
- hinkley 1y ago“Who cares if the world gets 2° warmer?” Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes care.
- kelnos 1y agoWhile there are a lot of things we can blame on climate change, likely this isn't one of them. There are already several types of mosquitos adapted to cold temperatures, much lower than Iceland's. A rise in temperatures didn't help them get to Iceland.
- hinkley 1y agoThe big thing with insects is going to be less about how they got there and more about whether they can survive a typical winter. Those of us in colder regions don't realize how spoiled we are for just having to wait three months for some of the worst pests to expire. Or plants for that matter.
- tb_technical 1y agoKill them while you still can. The mosquitos in the Midwest are so ferocious their swarms can kidnap small children.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI had an employee that hailed from MN. He had a T-shirt, with two mosquitoes on it. The caption was "Minnesota Air Force." When I lived in Nigeria, they had these swarms that were so dense, they could drain you of a measurable amount of blood, in a few minutes. My sister got caught in one. Not fun.
- lawn 1y agoWe have a "Mosquito Park" with the Jurassic Park logo, but with a mosquito on from where we live in the north of Sweden.
- nerdponx 1y agoThere is an hypothesis that dinosaurs were already in decline before the Cretaceous extinction due to the evolution of blood-sucking insects: https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/insect-attack-may-have-been-death-knell-dinosaurs https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/insect-attack-may-have-bee...
- nakamoto_damacy 1y agoSo in case of Iceland, can we call it Global Warming again? I miss that term. Has the future arrived, bit it’s not equally distributed?
- CNNCultists 1y ago[flagged]
- minkeymaniac 1y agoI never imagined that they could survive in Alaska. From the show Life below zero... take a look at these.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXq92PItsA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXq92PItsA0
- kulahan 1y agoShocking considering how cold it gets there. It's cold and dry and windy where I live, and there are nearly zero skeeters. I spend most of my afternoons on the porch, and I've been bit twice all summer. But this tracks with what I've heard from campers and hikers in that region. You wake up and your tent is covered in the little bastards.
- MathMonkeyMan 1y agoI've read that migrating herds change their course from year to year to avoid the recently hatched swarms of mosquitoes.
- fishywang 1y agoI have a magnet that's a mosquito with text "Alaska state bird".
- decimalenough 1y agoNosquitos themselves can't survive when it goes below freezing, but sadly their eggs are nearly indestructible. Siberia, Alaska and the northern parts of the Nordics are absolutely plagued with them in the summer, since snowmelt creates huge amounts of stagnant water that melts the eggs in a perfect habitat for breeding.
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- badc0ffee 1y agoIceland doesn't have "extreme cold". It does go below freezing in the winter, though, and it's relatively isolated. Calgary has a few weeks of -30C every winter, and we are not short on mosquitoes.
- sandworm101 1y agoAnd calgary is southern alberta, closer to the US border than it is to northern canada. Fort McMurray and areas north regularly get -40 weeks and still have loads of bugs come summer. (Being so far from any coast, the northern canadian praries often trade turns with inner siberia for the coldest place on earth during winter. The north pole is kept "warm" by the sea.)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ludwigvan 1y agoI hate mosquitoes with a passion. Might be the only species that I would want eradicated from Earth. From my experience (based in Turkey), mosquitoes seem to be getting more and more resilient. They have become an annoyance even in autumn, and I recall catching one last winter. A few decades ago, they used to only appear in late spring and summer. Anyone have a similar experience elsewhere?
- jamesblonde 1y agoIreland is still pretty much free of mosquitoes. I think it is the wind and exposure that keeps them out
- somat 1y agoYes Iceland has no mosquitoes(or perhaps I should say had) but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMgIVx2kUH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMgIVx2kUH4 People hear "Iceland has no mosquitoes" and think that means "Iceland has no biting flys", spoiler, they do.
- nealabq 1y agoSince Iceland is so isolated, it may be a good place to see if a gene drive can actually eradicate.