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So, I'm Susan Milius, the biology writer at Science News,
and I've had a very bizarre and entertaining year
writing about mosquitoes, of all things.
Mosquitoes suddenly mattered.
You could have conversations with people
at dinner parties about mosquitoes.
Some of the most interesting conversations I had
were with researchers who talked about
what we don't know about mosquitoes.
Which mosquitoes actually carry Zika?
The World Health Organization and the CDC have
long been saying that it's the Aedes aegypti mosquito,
and another Aedes relative.
But there's been talk in Brazil that maybe there's
a very different genus of mosquito,
the southern house mosquito,
which is a Culex mosquito --
that might actually be spreading it and
nobody's been paying much attention to them.
The results have been mixed.
This would turn everything upside down.
We might have to rethink a lot of how it might spread,
where it might spread, whether it would spread...
Whether a mosquito can spread a disease
is very different from whether it actually will.
Because mosquitoes have tastes, like everybody else.
There's a big question about what the Culex mosquitoes
actually like to bite.
I mean, who's the sort of cream puff, the chocolate
of mosquito, and who's the broccoli?
With respect for broccoli, of course.
So I think 2017 is going to be an exciting time,
as people sort out how they feel about
about using genetically modified insects
for mosquito control.
Key West has become just a storm center
for debate about this.
The mosquito control people in Key West
have decided that they are going to have a test
of genetically modified mosquitoes.
These will be the first genetically modified mosquitoes
to flap through US air.
What's ahead for 2017 is that
they are going to relocate the test and
find another area, within the same county,
where people aren't as upset by it.
And then, this requires going back through
government regulations again.
There's been a great deal of fuss about
this as an experiment in the U.S.,
but it's not so experimental anymore outside the U.S.
Brazil has had free-flying, genetically modified
mosquitoes for several years now,
and they've been released in other countries too.
This is not the first free-flying genetically modified
insect to be released in the U.S.
That was the pink bollworm, out in the Southwest.
So, there seems to be something about a mosquito
that just gets people upset.
We talk about "the" mosquito
when it's actually lots of mosquitoes.
And there are 3500 species in the world.
Some of them don't like blood.
Some of them are reportedly pretty.
Some of them, actually, are important to ecosystems,
like a carnivorous plant.
The pitcher plants have their own,
sort of, pet mosquitoes.
It's sort of sad that we don't recognize
the great diversity of mosquitoes out there.
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And you'd think, I mean they're an animal
that everybody recognizes.
I don't think anybody has them on their curtains
and pajamas when they are kids,
or has stuffed mosquitoes, as a general rule...
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