Jurassic Park — and its never-ending sequels and spinoffs — starts with a basic premise: extracting the DNA of long-dead dinosaurs from mosquitoes frozen in amber.
It turns out mosquitoes really are as voracious as Michael Crichton imagined. A study reveals that, within a small area in central Florida, mosquitoes fed on a whopping 86 different species of animals, capturing nearly all the vertebrate biodiversity in the area.
“They say Jurassic Park inspired a new generation of paleontologists, but it inspired me to study mosquitoes,” said Lawrence Reeves, Ph.D., a University of Florida entomologist and senior author of the new study, published last month in Scientific Reports.
Read more about In Echo of Jurassic Park, Mosquitoes Capture Entire Ecosystems in Their Blood Meals.
