Mosquitoes discovered in Iceland for the first time

This travel blog was posted a bit ago on HN [0]. Much of the nature of Greenland was a shock for me to learn about, including the severe mosquitos.

[0] https://matduggan.com/greenland-is-a-beautiful-nightmare/

Siberia is also known to have just extremely brutal mosquito seasons. Turns out even -40C isn't enough to do away with the little persistent blood suckers.

Iceland does have a lot of gnats, midges, flies etc. that are just as big a nusance.

Greenland is pretty close to the main body of North America, they would only need to traverse 30 miles of water to get there. Whereas Iceland is about 200 miles from the closest point in Greenland.

And calgary is southern alberta, closer to the US border than it is to northern canada. Fort McMurray and areas north regularly get -40 weeks and still have loads of bugs come summer.

(Being so far from any coast, the northern canadian praries often trade turns with inner siberia for the coldest place on earth during winter. The north pole is kept "warm" by the sea.)

Nosquitos themselves can't survive when it goes below freezing, but sadly their eggs are nearly indestructible. Siberia, Alaska and the northern parts of the Nordics are absolutely plagued with them in the summer, since snowmelt creates huge amounts of stagnant water that melts the eggs in a perfect habitat for breeding.

I have a magnet that's a mosquito with text "Alaska state bird".

I've read that migrating herds change their course from year to year to avoid the recently hatched swarms of mosquitoes.

Shocking considering how cold it gets there. It's cold and dry and windy where I live, and there are nearly zero skeeters. I spend most of my afternoons on the porch, and I've been bit twice all summer. But this tracks with what I've heard from campers and hikers in that region. You wake up and your tent is covered in the little bastards.

The species in the article is already adapted to cold weather. They will find out in the spring if it is adapted well enough to survive the icelandic winter

It is remarkable this is the first time mosquitos have been found in the wild in Iceland though. Even if they died out in the winter, you would expect some to hide in shipping containers and lay eggs all summer. Which is how we got Tiger Mosquitos in New Jersey, and now it doesn't get cold enough to kill them and it is so much worse than it used to be.

They probably hitched a ride on human travel. The article says "It’s unclear how the mosquito arrived in Iceland, but theories include the possibility it came via ships or containers."

There are mosquitos all across the arctic, in colder places that Iceland.

They typically survive the winter in egg form.

Stagnant fresh water in a ship most likely.

Isn't Iceland the green island, and Greenland the icy one?

Iceland per my visits isn't frigid on average 20 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit in January. In it's capital at least. Overall im surprised they called it IceLand vs. WindLand. The wind is fierce.

While there are a lot of things we can blame on climate change, likely this isn't one of them. There are already several types of mosquitos adapted to cold temperatures, much lower than Iceland's. A rise in temperatures didn't help them get to Iceland.

Could also be that mosquitos always managed to hitch a ride, but in so small numbers that they disappeared relatively quickly once they arrived, or it simply was too cold but some always appeared.

But now when it's a bit warmer, the same amount arrives but more survive.

In order to produce a breeding population, several mosquitoes need to hitch a ride on the same ship and stay close enough together that they can mate after arriving. They also need to survive the trip over without that much food. I imagine its quite unlikely.