Talk:Mosquito

Questions

This article is too sophisticated for being "bold," so I will be content with merely asking.

An article in a local paper filtered an interview from Mosquito Control through a relatively unknowlegeable reporter. It seemed to say that in our area (Florida), that fresh water mosquitoes were "less aggressive" but "more deadly" than salt water ones. Deadly because they (apparently) had access to animals that are inland which carried West Nile, Malaria, etc. Salt-water ones near the coast had less access (in populated areas?) to roving animals. Article not online. Sorry.

Anyway, how does any of this sound? The article does not seem to differentiate much between salt-water and fresh-water species. Student7 (talk) 02:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well done, both in restraint and your questions. I am no expert either in mosquito matters, or in Floridan ecology, and from the wording it does seem that your assessment of the competence of your journalist is accurate. Never mind the article not being on line; if I am to check up, it would be better to check independent sources. However, there is nothing intrinsically ridiculous about the general theme.

There are however several questions concerning the local situation. For a start, how many of the local fresh- and salt-water mossies are the same species. Some species are not very fussy about salt, some will only breed in fresh water, and so on. However, it is conceivable that salt-water mossies are more aggressive because they are more short of mammalian food, so they don't let strangers pass without exacting duty. It also is quite believable that mosquitoes that have contact with a wide range of hosts might more frequently transmit viruses, protozoal diseases, or both. However, as far as it goes this is all hand-waving, in spite of being reasonable. What I will do is to ramp up some background education on the theme and supplement the article accordingly. It is a perfectly desirable topic to include. Wish me luck! JonRichfield (talk) 08:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The fresh water versus salt water issue sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It may well be true in Florida but I'm not sure it would work as a general rule. What is true is that mosquitoes in different areas are more or less problematic depending on the diseases they are exposed to. Where I live (East Anglia, UK) we have anopheline mosquitoes that are capable of transmitting malaria. Historically malaria transmission took place, but it no longer occurs, mainly because of habitat change and anti-malarial drugs. Because of this, our anophelines aren't as dangerous as other people's anophelines, even though they might be the same species.

Another issue is that in some parts of the world, mosquitoes act as a bridge from animals to humans. Yellow fever occurs in non-human primates as well as people, for example. If someone travels to an area where this has occurred, they can be bitten by Aedes africanus and become infected. They then travel back to human areas where they start the usual cycle involving Aedes aegypti.

Well done (Jon) for offering to do the research. :) Pchown (talk) 10:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello again both.

Firstly, St, I agree with PC pretty well in detail. I am convinced that the SW/FW distinction is simply a function of salt marshes being uncongenial places for most humans to live, no matter how attractive they may be to biologists. The question of mossies vectoring imported pathogens is more complex; mosquito internal ecology is about as complex as the external ecology. Some pathogens kill or weaken the vector too abruptly (baaaad strategy! The holiest cow in the vectored pathogen's world view is: thou shalt honour thy vector, that thy days and thy family's years might be long in the land!) and such parasites don't last. Some apparently prime vector candidates turn out to be immune to the parasite for one reason or another (Eg not all Anopheles, not even all Anopheles of established vector spp. pass on all or any strains and spp. of Plasmodium. Interestingly, however, all the major genera of bloodsucking Culicidae seem to pass on filariasis, though I should not be surprised to find that there are a lot of ifs and buts.)

Secondly, I see that I had vaguely mentioned salt marshes before (or someone had; can't remember). I did a bit of filling in and rewording, but what bothers me now is that I have lost the thread a bit. If either of you would like to run an eye over the article and shout at me for messing it up so that I can have another go, please feel welcome. If I am not careful it becomes terribly easy to lose the thread as the article gets longer. And St, what I particularly would like to know is whether I have decreased or failed to improve the comprehensibility. (Damn! Meant to fill in some gaps in the graphics! I'll go and have another dekko.)

Cheers, Jon JonRichfield (talk) 15:02, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I've just had a look through it, and it looks pretty good to me. There is a lot of information in there now. I've been wondering about the to-do list at the top because most of the items seem to be done now:

• Morphology/sexual dimorphism: we've got information on the mosquito-specific things, including the sexual dimorphism in the mouthparts and the antennae. There doesn't seem much point in including generic features that are shared by all Diptera.

• Behaviour: we describe the behaviour of larvae, pupae and adults. Not sure if more is needed?

• We don't say much about the evolution of mosquitoes, though I'm not sure how much is actually known. Not much is known by me, anyway, so I can't help much with this one. :)

• Global distribution: I've added some information about this.

• Lasting effects (of bites, presumably): We've got a reasonable discussion of this, but I've added a few details about the time it might take for the swelling to subside.

• The article cited supports the claim about the evolutionary lineage (divergence of culicines and anophelines etc.). Do we need any more than that?

Pchown (talk) 11:55, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair comment. I have just added a couple of points concerning behaviour and feeding. You know as well as I do that there is no end to all the worthwhile stuff we could add if desired, but I reckon that we may be pretty close to the stage where we could await reasonable requests or inspired contributions, neither torturing ourselves with self-doubt, trying to cover all topics to indefinite depth. nor being small-minded about anyone wanting to add encyclopedic content. There are plenty of other articles waiting... JonRichfield (talk) 15:11, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

English comprehension detail

I came to this statement in the section "Control":

'Not all mosquitoes travel more than a few hundred metres if the wind is unfavorable.'

and I do not understand what it means. I am a native English speaker (from England), in my seventies, with a strong knowledge of the language. The fact that I find the sentence incomprehensible convinces me that it should be re-worded, but I hesitate to re-word it as the subject matter is outside my scope. Is there a mosquito-knowledgeable grammarian about who can make the statement comprehensible? --JHB (talk) 11:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Quite right. I have changed it and if anyone can improve on the new version, feel welcome. JonRichfield (talk) 14:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's another one which I, a native English speaker from England, am having trouble with:

Furthermore, even among mosquitoes that do carry important diseases, neither all species of mosquito, nor or all strains of a given species transmit the same kinds of diseases, nor do they all transmit the diseases under the same circumstances; their habits differ. For example, some species attack people in houses, and others prefer to attack people walking in forests. Accordingly, in managing public health it is important to know which species, even which strains, of mosquitoes one is dealing with.

Aside from "nor or", there's just too much exceptional language: "furthermore", "neither", "nor", "nor" again. When you're reading words like "even" and "that do" it sounds like a politician trying to convince you of something unreasonable. I want to rewrite it, but I'm afraid of changing the meaning, particularly around the end of the first sentence: "they" and "their", after "mosquitoes", "species of mosquito", and "all strains of a given species". Any ideas? --Rfsmit (talk) 20:32, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Origin of the word

I have reverted the edit made by Lguipontes about the origin of the word because the text is conjectural, unreferenced and contradictory (Spanish or Portuguese origin?). I don't think this article is the right place for discussing the origin of the English word. Maybe the present text could be replaced by something like The word mosquito is from the Spanish or Portuguese for little fly: "mosca" (from the Latin musca) and diminutive "ito". Thoughts? -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 09:24, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Did you read what I wrote? This seems to be of unknown etymology actually, as a little fly in their language is mosquita and in ours is mosquinha. Furthermore, we Portuguese speakers don't use -ita or -ito for most diminutives for insects, including these, albeit there is a possibility that this loanword entered English by Portuguese and not by its obvious most probable origin, Spanish. About the correct place to write it, eh, I thought it'd be lame to insert my new paragraph about etymology between two texts talking about biology. Lguipontes (talk) 10:27, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I have sympathies both ways in this matter, being fond of etymology as a field of discussion. Furthermore it seems reasonable to mention the broad topic of the English etymology of an English word in an English article when that word is the name of the subject of the article. A thoroughgoing historical analysis of that topic however certainly would be out of place. The reference given (Shorter OED) is about as authoritative as one could demand. It mentions the source as 16th century Sp & Pg and for all I know the Portuguese term may well have changed since then; certainly English has changed in the interval, and so have German, Dutch, Hungarian, Afrikaans (muskiet) and possibly even Tagalog. For my money it probably would be best simply to ascribe the root to 16th century Iberian, but I am willing to compromise on just plain Spanish. I appreciate Lguipontes' concern for comprehensive academic coherence, but I don't think this article is a suitable forum for the point at issue. Possibly a new article on Iberian etymology or even comparative Latin language etymology could be created, and I expect that it would prove as interesting as any other work on historical etymology, but this certainly is not the appropriate place, nor are the purer Anglophones among us the appropriate readership. As things stand at present, I see no need to delete the existing passing remark on the etymology, nor to expand on it. But I am open to cogent persuasion... JonRichfield (talk) 11:26, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I think I'll not make a point... Your reasons and those of Alvesgaspar are more than sufficiently good for explaining why it has no place here, and I'm not really knowledgeable about it perhaps except my native skills in West Iberian. Anyway a little fly wouldn't be a mosquito even if we go back centuries ago, though. It would not surprise me if it was a change caused by language evolution outside Iberia, but no, we use the same word in Spanish and Portuguese. It comes from Latin musca, then mosca, that is feminine. There must be a reason why this word is masculine. My first attempt was to correct the sentence that the origin of the word is from Spanish mosca + -ito, which bears no sense at all for the reason stated, for slightly obscure etymology (still from Spanish, though entering English by gosh-knows-whom), but everytime I start editing, I get inspired and try to put something more. Lguipontes (talk) 13:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, we still use diminutives the same way than in the 16th century. Galician diverged from Portuguese in the mid 12th century and they have the same diminutives. European Portuguese started to diverge from Brazilian and conservative African Portuguese in the mid-to-late 16th century and by the 19th century the language was no longer recognizable as a collective of dialects with gradual differences from region to region but as two main variants largely divergent on phonology, prosody and to some extent even grammar, still we use the same diminutives. All innovative traits of Brazilian Portuguese (most frowned upon depending on the context, deemed to be substandard) are shared with various other Romance languages, so the only thing that is likely to change a lot with time for us is spelling. We may absorb many loanwords (not sufficient to cause even about 2% in differences of lexicon between pt-PT and pt-BR), but português arcaico from the 16th century is still almost completely understandable for us (people sometimes try to reconstruct – something easy, or at least by and large possible, as dialects in both sides of the Atlantic preserve many old characteristics or it is documented – and do historical films with it). Even texts from the 13th century are mostly legible, ignoring tons of spelling reforms since and paying attention to etymology just as if it was Spanish. Lguipontes (talk) 14:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I can well understand your frustrations, but I also am a little confused. I did some checking with the intention of replacing the current etymology with something more linguistically correct in the light of your original edit (I am not maliciously obstructive, just stupid). However, when I went to online translators (I regrettably am no Hispanophone) the only translation of the diminutive of fly (I had to go to the Dutch "vliegje"; English is greatly impoverished in diminutives and Fliegechen didn't work!) what did I get? Mosquito!

So please be gentle with us...

It is extremely likely in every way that any distortion might have entered via the English orthography and ear of the day; Iberian tongues might have been surprisingly stable in the interval, but surprisingly few modern Anglophones can even read Shakespeare's English nowadays and even fewer can read it easily and comprehend it reliably.

What you say about the divergence of Portuguese colonial dialects is extremely interesting and sounds remarkably closely parallel to what has happened to various Dutch colonial dialects. For example, Afrikaans sounds archaic to most Dutch speakers, whereas Dutch sounds archaic to most Afrikaans speakers. There also are parallels even in "English". Some American modes of speech (use of participles like "gotten", for example) sound archaic to the literate English, whereas cases such as "whom" sound all but incomprehensible to all but the most literate Americans.

Cheers, JonRichfield (talk) 17:32, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Stupid? LOL, no, you seem to be far more intelligent than me at best.

For me the etymology of mosquito is really Spanish. Why those particular species were thought to bear particularly "masculine" characteristics among flies, I don't know.

I think http://translate.google.com/#es/en/mosquita, http://translate.google.com/#pt/en/mosquinha and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mosqui%C3%B1a.jpg may answer your questions. Thank you for the consideration. Lguipontes (talk) 21:51, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. The source presented clearly states that Mosquito is a Portuguese word and a Spanish word. The word was borrowed to English from Portuguese or Spanish. People must have something against Portuguese language to keep discarding this fact. I would recommend people to read these 3 sources before deleting the well sourced information: Department of Agriculture of Maryland [1] , American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [2] and American Mosquito Control Association [3]. By reading some comments here, it seems some people know little about Portuguese language grammar. If anyone have doubts about -ito suffix usage in diminutive in the Portuguese language,including in the mosquito word, please read these (in portuguese) [4] Tacv (talk) 23:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

POV & Citations vs invective

To justify removal of text one should have some basis better than an unsupported claim that it is POV. A statement given with the valid support of factual reasons is not POV. POV must be arguable. To demand citations sounds good, and if you really, really insist on citations to support some of the reasons given they would be possible, but don't you think it would be crazy to demand a citation to support "The roles of various species in different ecologies differ greatly..."? or "...many are active agents in recycling aquatic detritus..."? or "In practice, control measures focus on mosquito species that are vectors of human or livestock disease, or that are seriously irritant pests..."? or "Some, such as members of the genus Toxorhynchites, actually are beneficial predators of other mosquitoes"? You surely cannot be serious? The Toxorhynchites remark needs no citation because it is linked to the Toxorhynchites article, which has its own citations. Some of the other material is dealt with in this very article, but would be valid in terms of simple common sense. The only reason they even were mentioned were to justify what you called POV! As for POV, what point of view do you suggest is being pushed? JonRichfield (talk) 18:41, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Request to add photos

Mosquitoes-macro -siamak sabet