Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
An extremely aggressive mosquito that hunts by day has spread to Virginia's interior, four years after the bloodthirsty pest began bedeviling the backsides of Virginia Beach residents.
The Asian tiger mosquito, which commonly breeds in discarded tires, birdbaths and buckets, was discovered recently in downtown Charlottesville.
``I was just out in a lady's back yard, and in 10 minutes, I got hit six times by this mosquito,'' Charles W. Goodman, the local Virginia Cooperative Extension Service agent, said. ``I didn't even know it until I got in the truck and started off. We're going to have to start putting some pins on a map to see where they're spreading.''
The quarter-inch-long Asian tiger mosquito is black with silver stripes. It can transmit 27 diseases, although there have been no reported cases of disease transmission in Virginia, Goodman said.
Dreda McCreary, a mosquito control biologist in Virginia Beach, sent her condolences to Charlottesville residents upon hearing of the tiger mosquito's migration.
``They're extremely aggressive, extremely annoying and difficult to control,'' McCreary said. ``In 1991, they were found in two isolated places in the city. Now we find them everywhere.''
She speculated that the Asian tiger mosquito probably arrived in Charlottesville in a load of wet used tires. The mosquitoes, she said, are poor flyers and could not have migrated that far inland from Virginia Beach.
Goodman said the Asian tiger mosquito arrived in the United States in 1985, carried aboard a shipment of old tires from Japan. They showed up in Virginia in 1991 and since have spread over 310 square miles of the state's Atlantic Coast.
Virginia Beach has 35 species of mosquitoes, but last year, the Asian tiger mosquito alone accounted for half of the 2,400 complaints made to the mosquito control office.
``People call and say, `Help, they're horrible,''' McCreary said. ``Their behavior is quite different from other mosquitoes.''
Unlike most mosquitoes, which hunt blood at dusk and at night, the Asian tiger mosquito strikes any time of day, lying in wait for a meal in bushes and shrubs, said Peter Warren, assistant entomologist at Virginia Tech.
Getting rid of the mosquito is largely a matter of eliminating its breeding grounds, which happen to be any container holding water, McCreary said.
``They won't lay their eggs on the ground, in a ditch, a mud puddle, marsh or swamp,'' she said.
Spraying pesticides usually fails to eliminate the mosquitoes, she said, because they spend the day in covered areas - under awnings and in bushes and shrubs.
by CNB