This 2006 file photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a female Aedes aegypti mosquito in the process of acquiring a blood meal from a human host. (James Gathany/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via AP, File)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – They seem to be everywhere you want to be this summer; along the bosque, at the park, even around your home. Albuquerque is currently seeing its second brush with mosquitos for the year. But is it as bad as previous years?
Officials with the city’s environmental health department say it’s too soon to tell. Environmental Health Manager with the Urban Biology Division Nick Pederson says so far in 2024, we’ve seen lower mosquito numbers than last year. “We had less this spring, we had less runoff. Last spring was pretty bad through the bosque,” Pederson said. “It seems like some mosquitos were a little bit later emerging. We usually start to see numbers of tiger mosquitos increase kind of towards late June and it seemed like that happened in some places certainly but other neighborhoods have been a little bit behind, but they’re starting to emerge now.”
The number of mosquitos the city will see in its second wave of the year is closely tied to the severity of the monsoon season. “Depending on what kind of monsoon moisture the metro gets, we can see mosquito populations kind of increase if we’re getting water. Water is a super important part of their life cycle,” Pederson said.
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He says the heavy rain Albuquerque received in late June has encouraged the amount of mosquitos we’re seeing around town now. “A lot of the city got around one inch of rain, some parts over two inches and that’s a lot of water on the landscape,” said Pederson.
Their prediction was that around two weeks after the rain, the mosquito sightings would increase and Pederson can confirm that was the case. “We’re seeing that in some of our surveillance that numbers start to increase,” he said.
But how does the city keep track of how many mosquitos hit the Duke City? Pederson said they have two types of surveillance including long-term sites along the bosque region from the north end of the county to the south end using anywhere from 20 to 30 trap sites. “Those traps are set in the evening, they’re picked up in the morning, mosquitos are brought back to our lab, they’re frozen, and then they’re taken out and every single one of them is identified and counted. Certain species are tested for West Nile Virus,” Pederson said.
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The city also does what they call urban trapping which focuses on trapping tiger mosquitos (Aedes aegypti). “The last few years have been spent kind of documenting the extent of their range in the city…we’ve sort of been able to show that they’re virtually everywhere,” said Pederson.
To help keep the amount of mosquito bites you receive low, Pederson suggests avoiding the times of day when mosquitos are most active, namely early morning and evening. Also, even though it’s counterproductive to beating the heat, wearing long sleeves and pants will give mosquitos less real estate to feast on. Insect repellant is also recommended or, if you want to go a more natural approach, lemon eucalyptus works well but Pederson advises it needs to be applied more often.
It’s also a great time to check your screens on windows and doors. “Checking on water that you might purposefully have at the house… bird baths, rain barrels, fountains, dog dishes,” Pederson said. “Making sure they’re clean, give them a good scrub down once a week. Keep that water replaced, don’t let it go stagnant.”
To give an idea as to the types of mosquito numbers the City of Albuquerque has collected per year, below are the annual numbers from 2016 to 2022.
- 2016 – 130,471
- 2017 – 52,587
- 2018 – 27,777
- 2019 – 126,952
- 2020 – 43,338
- 2021 – 73,235
- 2022 – 92,207