Lee County Mosquito Control working to control mosquito population

It’s hard to think about the good mosquitos provide, but there are benefits to the little suckers.

They feed on nectar and ultimately like bees, they are pollinators.

And mosquitoes are a food source for many organisms in Southwest Florida.

Still, we don’t want too many here and that’s why Mosquito Control is out in full force.

“We do a lot of pretreatments this time of year in anticipation of the high tides that are going to be coming in, in the coastal areas,” said Eric Jackson, the deputy director of Lee County Mosquito Control.

By ground and sky, Mosquito Control works to trap and treat the hundreds of thousands of mosquitos not many of us want to see this time of year. Mosquito Control uses adulticides and larvacides.

“Our primary goal is to get the mosquito before it’s flying so we want to get mosquitoes while they’re in the water because they’re contained and they’re easy to get to and we can use target specific materials so we can get rid of them before they become flying biting adults,” Jackson said. “We trap the mosquitoes through various methods so we see the areas where we have higher traps than others and that helps us to target where to go.”

But are those adults dangerous?

FGCU biology professor Joyce Fassbender said mosquitoes are more annoying than they are harmful.

“There are some species that can carry disease,” Fassbender said. “As a matter of fact, there are scientists that are working to try to eliminate that particular species because it’s not a native species. And it actually is one of the ones that carry West Nile. It can also carry dengue and a couple other things as well.”

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