Yellow Fever Mosquito

• It breeds almost exclusively in artificial containers of clean water: plant pot saucers, tyres, drums and guttering, which has made it a fully urban mosquito.
• Its eggs survive for months when dry and hatch as soon as they are wetted, so they travel the world inside used tyres and ornamental plants.
• Two new techniques are used against it: releasing sterile males and introducing the bacterium Wolbachia, which stops the mosquito from transmitting the viruses.
• It transmits dengue, yellow fever, Zika and chikungunya, and it is the urban mosquito par excellence: it breeds in any container holding clean water in and around houses.
• It bites by day, above all at dawn and dusk, which makes bed nets of little use against it.
• It is an intermittent biter: it interrupts and resumes feeding several times and on several people, which multiplies its effectiveness as a transmitter.
• Its eggs withstand desiccation for months. Laid on the dry wall of a container, they wait for the first rain to hatch, and that is the mechanism by which it travels around the world in used tyres.
• A remarkable strategy is being deployed against it: infecting it with the bacterium Wolbachia, which blocks the replication of the dengue virus inside the mosquito itself and spreads through the population on its own. Trials by the World Mosquito Program in Indonesia managed to cut dengue cases by around 77%.
• It is native to Africa and spread with the slave trade and maritime traffic from the 17th century onwards.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Tropical and subtropical urban areas, in containers of standing water

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_aegypti