Arctic Warming Produces Mosquito Swarms Large Enough to Kill Baby Caribou

By Cole Mellino, EcoWatch

16 September 15

others are becoming malnourished. Fewer calves are being born, and fewer are surviving their crucial first few months,” says Andersen. “And even when they do survive, they are still vulnerable, to overhunting, and to diseases carried north by deer that would never have survived the Arctic chill of yesteryear.” Now add to that the growing swarms of mosquitoes and you see why it’s a real problem.

“Arctic mosquito swarms are the stuff of legend,” says Andersen. “Some of them contain hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of insects. That’s enough to harass a pregnant caribou until she stops worrying about food. And it’s enough to kill caribou calves outright.” They inundate entire herds and the caribou’s only defense is to flee, leading to decreased eating and further stress on the population. Research from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that “insect harassment interferes with caribou foraging, which also decreases survival.”

In high enough numbers, “they can drain enough blood to fell a caribou and sometimes even kill it,” says the video below. “The caribou are forced off their grazing grounds by a predator 10 million times smaller than they are.” That’s got to sting.

And it’s only expected to get worse. Culler took some of the mosquitoes into her lab and placed them into slightly warmer water to simulate Arctic waters in the near future. Her results: the mosquitoes hatched even earlier and grew even faster.

With the Arctic sea ice hitting its fourth lowest level on record last week, the Arctic can expect more and more swarms of mosquitoes in the future.

Humans in the Arctic are feeling the pinch as well. Culler told National Geographic that a colleague in Greenland was assaulted by more than 100 mosquitoes at once. And the bugs in that region were mild for the Arctic. “You can be completely covered in a matter of seconds,” Culler says.

Watch this video of Arctic mosquito swarms: