UF Researcher Tricking Pesky Insects Into Self-Destructing

January 30, 1998

SANFORD — A University of Florida researcher plans to trick swarming cousins of the mosquito into becoming kamikazes.

Although the insects are often called blind mosquitoes, they may see too well for their own good. Their weakness for bright light plays into the hands of Arshad Ali, an entomologist with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Ali is installing four street lights on each of two 91-foot Navy surplus barges on Lake Monroe, which borders Sanford. In about two months, he will place the barges between an uninhabited area of the lake where the insects breed and the city.

He hopes the insects will stop off as they fly toward town to party. On each barge, spotlights will lure them toward a panel draped with more than 30 yards of cloth treated with insecticide. “When they dive for the lights, they should smack headlong into the cloth and meet their end,” Ali said.

People around the world would welcome relief from swarms of blind mosquitoes, which are known as midges in some areas. Ali’s work took him to Venice, Italy, where planes landing at Marco Polo Airport were skidding on heaps of blind mosquitoes that had accumulated on runways.

The only good thing about blind mosquitoes is they don’t bite. Their rap sheet includes:

Driving residents inside and sending tourists packing,
Causing allergic reactions and breathing difficulties,
Clogging air conditioners and car radiators,
Creating a fishy smell after they die,
Attracting spiders that deface property with the webs they spin to trap the insects.
The pests are most prevalent in tropical and subtropical climates, where they are a problem much of the year, but they also can be a menace as far north as Minnesota and Canada in the summer.

The barge plan may be Ali’s best shot — after 19 years of research — in his battle against blind mosquitoes in lakes. “They are extremely difficult to control in large bodies of water,” Ali said. “Everything else we’ve tried on places like Lake Monroe hasn’t worked very well or has been very expensive.”

Applying compounds that kill larvae on the top of lakes and ponds, a common treatment for mosquitoes, is cumbersome and relatively expensive against blind mosquitoes. That’s because, unlike the mosquito, the blind mosquito’s eggs and larvae remain submerged.

Killing the pests with sprays broadcast into the air requires large amounts of insecticide, poses risks to the environment and is expensive.Although fish and some other insects devour them, blind mosquitoes generally reproduce faster than predators can keep up with them.

“Fortunately, they rarely stray more than a few city blocks from water,” Ali said. “Since they’re concentrated in such areas, we’re optimistic about using bright lights to entrap them on lakes. Still, there’s no magic wand that will work in all settings.”