mosquito – UF Innovate

In Echo of Jurassic Park, Mosquitoes Capture Entire Ecosystems in Their Blood Meals (UF News)

sooyoungryu — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:36:53 +0000

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.

Sloth Fever Unlikely To Spread via Mosquitoes in Southeastern US (UF News)

sooyoungryu — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:31:14 +0000

In 2024, “sloth fever” hit the news cycle as a new public health threat: The virus was found in people who’d recently traveled to Cuba, and the serious health risks associated with the disease prompted concern about whether it could spread and become established in the U.S.

Sloth fever is the popularized name of the illness caused by the Oropouche virus, which is endemic to countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba and Peru, and it is primarily spread from person to person by a species of no-see-um. In 2024, about 105 travel-related cases of Oropouche virus infection were spotted in the U.S. – about 103 of which arrived in Florida, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Disease Experts Team Up With Florida Museum of Natural History To Create a Forecast for West Nile Virus (Florida Museum)

sooyoungryu — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 20:25:08 +0000

A study has a significant bearing on the hackneyed joke about chickens and their numerous reasons for crossing roads. In Florida, there’s a good chance that the chicken crossed the road because it had completed its year-long conscripted service as a disease sentinel, a sort of early alarm signal for mosquito virus activity across the state.

Mosquito control programs maintain hundreds of chicken coops from the Panhandle down through Miami. Once a week, throughout large portions of the year, officials take a small blood sample from each of several chickens and send them to the Florida Department of Health, where they’re tested for antibodies to common mosquito-borne diseases, such as West Nile virus and eastern equine encephalitis. If the results are positive, the state will warn residents to be especially wary of mosquitos until the danger is past.