The melting snow forms shallow springtime tundra ponds where these Arctic mosquitoes develop. For this scientific quest, they have made computer simulations imaging a scenario in which temperatures would rise by 2 degrees Celsius.
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The massive swarms of Arctic mosquitoes harass breeding caribou to the point where they will forego finding food for their calves to escape the insects.
Results showed that a rise by 2°C in Arctic temperatures – which is incidentally what a UN panel predicted for Arctic warming this century – is the equivalent of a 53 percent increase in the chances that a mosquito would mature to adulthood.
Using field observations and controlled experiments, Dartmouth College scientists measured the impacts of increasing temperatures on development and death rates from predation on young mosquitoes in western Greenland.
Unlike mosquitoes in temperate regions, those in the Arctic do not carry malaria or other diseases known to be dangerous to humans. In the lab, mosquito larvae developed about 10 percent quicker with every 1-degree Celsius increase in temperature.
“Increased mosquito abundance, in addition to northward range expansions of additional pest species, will have negative consequences for the health and reproduction of caribou”, says postdoc researcher Lauren Culler of the Dickey Center Institute of Arctic Studies, in tinned quote supplied to the media.
The Benchmark Reporter reports that a new climate model tracked the life span of mosquitoes and concluded that the species may start migrating further north than ever before.
Global warming is bad news for all involved and climatic changes has been rising the temperatures everywhere on the planet. But the warming Arctic would eventually kill them if they emerge earlier than the apparition of the animals whose blood they eat.
Caribou, which are one of the few sources of blood for mosquitoes, are known to change their behaviour in responseto harassment from the biting insects, by abandoning areas for more isolated ones such as snowy patches or windy ridges.
The researchers single out caribou as most at risk from increased numbers, as the insects’ earlier emergence is more in line with the calving season, when young caribou are most vulnerable.
“Warming in the Arctic can thus challenge the sustainability of wild caribou and managed reindeer in Fennoscandia (Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of northwest Russia), which are an important subsistence resource for local communities”, said Culler in a research announcement.
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“Temperature has such a strong effect on almost all biological systems”.
