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Mosquito season

The period of the year when people are attacked by those blood-sucking insects could be called mosquito season. It is usually the warm and wet period that differs year after year depending on climatic and other conditions.

Abundance of mosquitoes is mostly influenced by the temperature and humidity as well as the availability of breeding sites. That means that during the winter in most of the countries mosquitoes are usually not active. Mosquito season usually begins in spring and could last till the late autumn. For example Culex mosquitoes in California are most active from April through October. In Florida the dry and cold-enough winter period could sometimes last only several weeks when production of new mosquitoes is halted and adult mosquitoes are not active, hiding under homes, in garages and attics, in storm drains, under rocks, in hollow trees or any other suitable place. Whereas in temperate territories mosquitoes are usually overwinterig in larval stages.
Female mosquito needs blood to develop her eggs and water to lay them. Later eggs hatch into aquatic stages - wrigglers (larvae) that molt into tumblers (pupae). Finally adult mosquitoes hatch from the pupae. During the cold period of the year this process is temporarily stopped. Depending on the year, spring like weather could awaken mosquitoes abnormally early. If there are also plenty of water pools available, then we have a risk of very abundant mosquito season.
Unusually high summer temperatures and excessive rainfall could determine the spread of southern mosquitoes to temperate climate zones thus also widening the risk of malaria infection.

During the last 15 years there has been a noticeable rise of the malaria infections in tropical areas as well as in temperate territories of former endemic malaria. One of the reasons for that is the increase of the annual temperature because of the global warming. For example during the XX century mean annual temperature rose around 0.6 degrees Celsius in Eurasia with the rise of about 1 degree in Russia or even 1.5 degrees Celsius in some of its Northern territories. Such changes prolong the mosquito season and facilitate the spread of mosquito species to new territories. Scientist think that such dangerous tendencies of the spreading of mosquitoes are also induced by the changes in ecosystems because of the climatic and anthropogenic influence, socio-demographic changes (urbanization) that allow the quick spreading of transmissible infections.

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