Frogs, garter snakes, turtles, none of the inhabitants of the pond escape the bites of adult mosquitoes. But they feast on their aquatic larvae, and few of them escape.
The world's ponds busy
Wetlands around the world are home to mosquitoes. Their eggs, and then their larvae, live in the water. The winged adults, while often foraging, are in search of blood, in all vertebrates. The inhabitants of the banks of the pond know them only too well.
In Europe, they are mainly solicited by Aedes, rather in temporary wetlands, Culex and some Anopheles in stagnant waters. In their family Culicidae we will also find the Coquillettidia, with a very original respiratory mode.
Aquatic larvae, air breathing
Mosquito larvae live in water but continue to breathe like terrestrial insects. They look for air on the surface of ponds, positioning themselves head down, vertically, for the Culex. A well known posture where we see the small silhouettes grouped, long and thin, as if hooked to the surface by their respiratory siphon. They stay there, breathing in and out. The Anopheles, without siphon, will lie under the surface allowing the air to circulate in their tracheas. And the Coquillettidia will never come to the surface. But then? From their pointed respiratory siphon they pierce the tissues of aquatic plants, and take the necessary air from them.
They feed on waste, nectar and a little blood
From the larva to the adult, from the male to the female, the feeding of mosquitoes differs completely. The adult female is well known for biting, injecting an anti-coagulant, and sucking blood from her prey. All this to bring to maturity her young, eggs that she will deposit delicately on the surface of the water.
Out of this period, the adults fly from flowers to flowers, feeding on their nectar and pollinating them. The larvae will spend their few weeks of aquatic life filtering and cleaning the water. They shake their mouth bristles, creating a water current, feeding on floating microparticles.
Larvae wriggle, adults fly
A mosquito larva has no legs, the observer approaching a tank of water will see them wriggling to disappear towards the bottom, helped by bristles arranged all along the body. The nymph, a strange silhouette with a large thorax floating in the middle of the larvae, is equipped with a swimming paddle at the end of its abdomen. The adult, better known, has a single pair of wings and two pendulums, like all members of its group Diptera.
Males and females, aquatic meetings
The females, with the hematophagous diet essential to the development of the eggs, lay eggs on the surface of the water. They float in small irregular groups in Anopheles, in rafts in Culex and Aedes. A first larva hatches, it will moult three times before turning into a nymph. With cycles of a few days to a few weeks, depending on the species and climatic conditions. Mobile, with a large dark thorax from which emerges a small breathing tube, the nymph will give birth to the winged adult at the surface.
Mosquitoes are not very popular, and often the idea of the pond, of the body of water, is associated with them, with the fear of seeing them invade our gardens. However, in the pond many predators devour them, and dragonflies spare few adults... They are thus essential to this ecosystem!
