Bastion breached: Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as warming climate triggers buzz
The country is heating up at four times the rate of the rest of the northern hemisphere, and glaciers have been collapsing fast too.
For the first time, mosquitoes have been found in Iceland, signalling yet another inevitable consequence of climate crisis, the Guardian has reported.
Matthias Alfreosson, an entomologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland, who confirmed the findings, said the insects were sent to him by a citizen scientist. “Three specimens of Culiseta annulata were found in Kioafell, Kjos, two females and one male. They were all collected from wine ropes during wine roping aimed at attracting moths,” the Guardian quoted Alfreosson as saying.
According to news agency AFP, they were sighted around 30 kilometres north of the capital Reykjavik.
Alfreosson identified the insects himself, the report added. The presence of the insects in the Nordic Island country, situated between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, highlights the fact that global heating has made the region more hospitable for insects.
To be sure, Iceland houses breeding habitats like marshes and ponds in abundance and scientists have also previously predicted that it was only a matter of time that mosquitoes established themselves there. The harsh weather conditions make it difficult for many species to survive.
However, the country is heating up at four times the rate of the rest of the northern hemisphere, the report said, adding that “glaciers have been collapsing and fish from warmer, southern climes such as mackerel have been found in the country’s waters”. Till a month ago, Iceland was one of the two places in the world without mosquitoes — the other is Antarctica.
But Alfreosson did not believe that a warmer climate explained the discovery.
The species “appears to be well adapted to colder climates”, which “allows them to withstand long, harsh winters when temperatures drop below freezing”, he said. He added that its “diverse breeding habitats... further enhances its ability to persist in Iceland’s challenging environment,” AFP quoted him.
According to the Guardian report, Bjorn Hjaltason “found the mosquitoes and posted about it on the Facebook group Insects in Iceland”.
“At dusk on October 16, I caught sight of a strange fly on a red wine ribbon,” Bjorn said, referring to the trap he uses to attract insects. “I immediately suspected what was going on and quickly collected the fly. It was a female,” the news portal quoted Hjaltason as saying.
He caught two more mosquitoes after which he sent them to the science institute, where Alfreosson identified them.
“They were all collected from wine ropes... aimed at attracting moths,” the researcher said in an email to AFP, referring to a method of adding sugar to heated wine and dipping ropes or strips of fabric into the solution, which are then hung outside to entice the sweet-toothed insects.
“It is the first record of mosquitoes occurring in the natural environment in Iceland. A single Aedes nigripes specimen (arctic mosquito species) was collected many years ago from an airplane at Keflavik airport,” Alfredsson said, adding that “unfortunately, that specimen is lost”.
As global warming picks up pace, mosquito populations have been found inhabiting regions where they previously did not survive. These include parts of the UK, where eggs of the Egyptian mosquito (Aedes aegypti) were found this year, and the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), which was found in Kent. These species are invasive, scientists have observed, and can spread tropical and dangerous diseases like dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus.
Researchers have also observed that this pattern mirrors broader ecological changes across northern regions. Insects once limited to southern latitudes are now migrating northward as warming trends alter ecosystems. Similar range expansions have been documented in Norway and Canada, where longer warm seasons have increased mosquito diversity and abundance. The present event is an indication of how ecosystems are responding to global warming.
With inputs from agencies
