Climate Scientists Are Ringing Alarm Bells After Spotting the First-Ever Mosquito in Iceland

On the autumnal sunset of October 16, Björn Hjaltason stepped out into the glacial valley of Kjos, southwest of Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik, to check on the wine-soaked ropes he had laid out to catch moths. He had designed these ropes by smothering strips of fabric with a solution of sugar blended with heated red wine, a lure to trap the sweet-toothed insects. When he walked to the ropes, he felt stalled for a moment. Instead of a moth, he noticed a “strange fly” perched on it. He looked around and found that there were three of them. He collected and parcelled them to Matthías Alfreðsson, an entomologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland. From the laboratory, Alfreðsson reported to him that the strange fly was, in actuality, a mosquito, according to a report by Science Alert.

A mosquito in Iceland sounds like a scene popping from science fiction. Iceland and its elder sister cousin Antarctica, were known to be the only two places where mosquitoes couldn’t be found. Without ample heat and stagnant water, mosquitoes wouldn’t be able to survive. However, as Alfreosson reflected, global warming is dramatically shifting the dynamics of these icy pieces. With mercury jumping on the temperature scale, the previously stable ice fortress of Iceland now seems to be collapsing. And the very first invaders to witness this collapse turn out to be these little buzzing mozzies.

After investigating the mosquitoes Hjaltason sent him, Alfreðsson confirmed that one was female and the other male. Both species belonged to the family Culiseta annulata, a family known to successfully survive winter. In conversation with CNN, he noted that the species is common across parts of Europe and North Africa, but it isn’t clear how they reached Iceland. He suspects that they likely ended up here in a container or a ship. "It is the first record of mosquitoes occurring in the natural environment in Iceland. A single Aedes nigripes specimen (arctic mosquito species) was collected many years ago from an airplane at Keflavik airport," Alfredsson pointed out. The mysterious culprit that helped these mozzies smuggle their way into the Icelandic territory was, according to experts, global warming.

Iceland, The Guardian reports, is showing record numbers of global warming, precisely four times the rate of the rest of the northern hemisphere. Glaciers are collapsing. Icebergs crumbling. Fish swimming in the ocean aren’t natives; rather, they are immigrants from the warmer, southern waters. Until this month, Iceland too was devoid of mosquitoes, like Antarctica. But now, while Antarctica’s icescape remains unfazed, Iceland is already at the grips of being colonized by the new visitors. Alfredsson predicts that the mozzies will, most probably, establish themselves here.

“The species is cold-resistant and can survive Icelandic conditions by sheltering through winter in basements and barns,” he told The Guardian. Interestingly, the heating up of the planet hasn’t just pilfered the space of Iceland. Similar occurrences are being observed elsewhere across the planet. In the UK, eggs of Egyptian mosquitoes have been discovered recently. In Kent, Asian tiger mosquitoes have been discovered. All these are invasive species that can spread tropical diseases like dengue, chikungunya, and the Zika virus. Meanwhile, Hjaltason is lurking around and spying the glacial valley, hunting for more mozzies that may be hiding in the fissures of ice. "If three of them came straight into my garden, there were probably more," he told Iceland's Morgunblaðið news site, per BBC.