The one good thing about the weather this time of year is you don’t have to worry about mosquitoes. Information just released by Iowa State University’s mosquito surveillance program found mosquito activity was particularly high in the past year. I-S-U entomologist Ryan Smith says one thing they didn’t find in trapping nearly 176-thousand mosquitoes were any concerns about the Zika virus.
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Smith says the bigger concern is that the I-S-U medical entomology lab collected 46 “pools” of mosquitoes that tested positive for West Nile virus in 2016, an increase from the 17 pools that tested positive in 2015.
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Smith says the I-S-U surveillance found that overall mosquito activity peaked unusually early in 2016 as populations reached their highest levels in late May, likely due to wet conditions in April.