How big is a dragonfly _egg_? How big is the baby dragonfly larvae that hatches from that egg? The dragonfly larvae in my palm above looks as though it should have come out of the movie Aliens. But when it started life it was smaller than a grain of sand. It has gone through several molts to get to the size it is. How big is a damselfly larvae?
If one adds any type of fish to a pond without providing habitat for the baby dragonflies and damselflies you will be removing the mosquito predators instead of the mosquitoes from the environment.
Vector control, by encouraging mosquito fish practically guarantees themselves a perpetual job. Did you know that the Pacific chorus frog _tadpoles_ actually eat a lot of mosquito larvae? And the adult frogs eat a lot of mosquitoes too, but…
Female hummingbirds need an extra source of protein in the spring for producing their eggs. They eat insects. Lots of flying insects. I have seen many a hummingbird flying back and forth over a pond eating the midge flies hatching from the main pool. Non-insecticide poisoned midge flies for the hummers :-)
The majority of mosquitoes in the environment are not coming from ponds. They are coming from trays of water under pots in people’s backyards. Mosquitoes can fly 8 miles in an evening.
Zika drives me crazy. Columbia has just as much zika virus as Brazil and just as many pregnant woman but had just 2 cases of micro encephaly… just 2… Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay — all have zika virus and mosquitoes but no micro encephalitis– think about that!
The picture below is from the European Centre for disease prevention and control in 2015.
The red circles are micro encephalitis cases the bigger the circle the more cases.
Now if zika and micro encephaly were actually linked wouldn’t the cases show up where there are mosquitoes zika and pregnant women? Anyone care to guess where there are mosquitoes? (Everywhere) Where there is zika? (Orange) OK, now a really tough one: where are there pregnant women? (Just a guess but in my opinion probably pretty much everywhere) and where were they adding an insecticide to the water supply? (probably just a coincidence but it’s right under the biggest red dot). But the scientific link is not to insecticides it is to zika. Go figure.
Brazil now has thousands of micro encephaly cases and just happened to be adding a mosquitocide to their tapwater/drinking water supply until they suddenly stopped.
Many insecticides are neurotoxins. Adding them to the water supply certainly couldn’t poison developing human nerve systems. Eye roll.
But you don’t hear much of this in the news, or from most scientists, or the CDC. I would just hate to say that this is because there is no money in doing research to prove that it was stupid to add insecticide to the entire water supply in Brazil. The few cases of microcephaly in Columbia probably came from people visiting relatives in Brazil and drinking the water!
And for Americans: other than the fact that the brain damage in Brazil probably doesn’t have anything to do with zika, there are as of this date _no_ instances of mosquito-borne zika transmission in the US.
Maybe we should worry about stuff that’s actually hurting us. Like the vector control departments that now want to do aerial spraying of insecticides to combat (nonexistant) zika.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/982959398459301
Wow how intelligent! Instead of putting neurotoxins in our drinking water like Brazil we will put it into our air. Hummingbirds, or any birds for that matter, won’t be getting toxin free bugs for their babies anymore. Nor will the dragonflies and damselflies be happy. More *destroy the mosquito predators and guarantee yourself a job* by the vector control agencies. Shaking my head and laughing. Crying too.
A chemical-free pond has habitat for mosquito predators. So instead of spraying toxins over your environment, and your neighbors as well, you will be producing lots of mosquito eating organisms that are simply fun to watch too.
A swimming pool generally has a fantastic glide path for a bat. Bats, fantastic mosquito predators, need to drink but do not stop and sit on the side like a bird. They drink on the wing and need to swoop in and grab a mouthful of water. So they need a 20-30 foot glide path, no obstacles, and no chlorine.
With a non-chlorine pond ecology established in a pool you will have a multi-tiered mosquito defense in your backyard. Pesticides are instant gratification, natural systems are not. But natural systems are so much better on so many levels in my opinion.
Best