Zhvg: The best weapon against the bug: the mosquito net and the cell phone

Autumn has arrived, and with it the invasion of bed bugs, unknown for a few years, but now we are forced to face it in the same way that mosquitoes torment us in summer. About 900 species of insects live here, and there are more and more exotic and invasive species among them. There are some that only annoy us, but there are some that also pose a serious threat to agriculture.

The Asian marble bug, which is now showing up in large numbers in large cities, made a real difference when it caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to American agriculture, recalls landscape ecologist Dávid Korányi. This insect “prefers to feed on crops like us: it loves apples, peaches, soybeans, but it can also feed on up to 100 different plants. And its bite discolors the pulp of the apple, making the fruits that are smoked, for example, not sold. And this is already a problem in Hungary ”, warns the employee of the Ecological Research Center.

The autumn insect invasion in Hungary is mainly related to the Asian marble bug that came to us from Asia via the United States. It was first found at home in 2013, explains Dávid Korányi. Thanks to the warmer climate and longer summers, this bug can develop up to two generations instead of one per year. “While the Asian gray marble bug was introduced, the changing climate is likely to play a role in the spread of its African-born relative, the green migratory bug,” he says.

The question arises of how to defend against mistakes. According to the expert

Prevention is the most effective against insects that want to settle in flats and houses.

“Effective window and door protection is very important, let’s install a tightly woven, fixed screen. We can also sweep and throw bugs, but there are also many who undertake the fight against them with household insecticides ”, he lists. However, she cautions everyone not to squeeze or try to suck up the beetles. “As a defense, the bugs shed foul-smelling secretions, which we simply spread around the apartment with the air blown out by the vacuum cleaner,” he warns.

In agriculture, the industrial eradication of insects presents a number of risks. “So-called broad-spectrum drugs used against them are only used for a short time, but in the meantime they pose a significant threat to the environment, as well as to other, even useful, insect species,” he says.

However, he is hopeful that the traps will be available in the US for now, that they will use pheromones to catch insects en masse, in the hundreds, and that the natural enemy of the Asian marble bug, the samurai wasp, will has appeared in Europe, although specimens of it have not yet been discovered in Hungary.

And then came climate change

The invasion of insects does not simply mean that people perceive the proliferation of insects. “The other phenomenon is that exotic species appear,” says Zsolt László Garamszegi, evolutionary ecologist-biologist, director of the Institute of Ecology and Botany, who said that both should be taken into account.

Climate change also plays a role in both: “Warmer climates and variable rainfall create conditions that favor, for example, the survival and / or reproduction of hip mosquitoes. And due to the longer summer, the breeding season is extended, so the mosquitoes stay active longer. This effect can be felt even without exotic species. Due to the more favorable climate and the development of suitable breeding sites, certain species of mosquitoes move to cities, to habitats closer to humans and can lay eggs, for example, in vases or even in small water in children’s toys ”, the researcher explains how climate change affects insects. why a specimen can buzz in our ears even now, in early October.

However, what reaches the threshold of stimulation of people is not always proportional to the magnitude of the problem, he points out.

There were probably a lot of mosquitoes in the Carpathian Basin at the time of the conquest, but I don’t think there is as much pain around it as there is today.

It’s hard to see the situation realistically because we don’t have long-term data and studies going back 20-30 years in the country to draw clear conclusions and trends. For some species of mosquitoes, there may be observations of certain trends that support theories about the impact of climate change. But we cannot make so many generalizations from these that the number of mosquitoes in all species would have increased so drastically, “says László Garamszegi.

Besides climate change, other human activities that affect the environment are not negligible. According to the expert, insect eggs are introduced by international transport, for example by boat or plane, and if warming already provides ideal living conditions for their reproduction, stable populations will develop from the introduced cases. There are 50 species of hip mosquitoes in the Hungarian fauna in Hungary, about 10 of which regularly bite humans. In addition, 3 invasive cases have appeared in the last 5-10 years. “In the case of an exotic species, the potential danger is, on the one hand, that it is a carrier of some disease or pathogen, but when it appears in a new area, it enters the already established stable ecosystem, the food chain, as new actors it displaces native species. ” get the expert’s attention.

It’s better to be afraid than to be afraid

Researchers do not have sufficient resources to assess concern about the spread of insects, which is why it is increasingly common in Hungary. citizen science, when residents are asked to help document, say, photographed with their cell phone and sent when an individual of a particular species is discovered.

A Sokk an insect Also in this way, an error map of the country is made with the participation of the population. In their September announcement, they drew attention to the fact that invasive crested insects are now completely covering many places. Their living conditions are increasingly favorable here, and in autumn they look for a winter refuge, to also be able to occupy their apartments and houses. Also, as these are new insects, researchers and biologists don’t know much about them yet, so it is especially important to collect such information based on community participation.

The ELKH Ecological Research Center, Institute of Ecology and Botany, also issued a national appeal to residents in the summer to obtain as much information as possible about the location of the most well-known invasive species, the Asian tiger mosquito. These are easy to distinguish from “smooth” mosquitoes: spots and stripes of snow-white scales on a black background outline their bodies, they have white rings on their legs, and a single longitudinal white stripe on their back.

Why is it essential to keep track of these insects? Mosquitoes play an important role as a vector (vector) in the spread of many animal and human pathogens, and thus can pose an epidemiological threat: the Asian tiger mosquito can spread 22 types of viruses. And it’s not just about invasive species – native species are also capable of transmitting pathogens that are spreading around the world, like West Nile fever.

However, mosquitoes and the pathogens they carry are not getting enough attention at the moment due to the coronavirus epidemic, although West Nile fever also claimed human lives a few years ago, also in Hungary. “Instead of fear and panic, ecological prognosis and diagnostics are needed. This should be routine, and then we can move forward in time and not focus on clinical diagnosis and treatment when an epidemic has already broken out, ”he says.

Take a picture of a mosquito!

Mosquito Alert app is available – download it and if you see a mosquito, take a photo with the app and send it with some details. The scientists then identify the mosquito (for example, decide if it is an invasive species) and report the result. But more importantly, they allow you to track on a map and a database how many new mosquitoes (possibly disease-spreading) have already appeared and where in Europe. The project is supported by 46 institutes in 27 countries and the app is already available in 18 European countries, including Hungary. In Europe, several cases of dengue fever and 168 more cases of West Nile fever have been reported, mainly in Mediterranean countries. The Hungarian researchers who participated in the project were A degree and a half he asked about the application and its background..