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In the book The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, author Timothy C. Winegard estimates that there could be around 110 trillion mosquitoes in the world. Some global mosquito population estimates are in the quadrillions. No one knows for sure as they are impossible to count and only live for a short time.
The male mosquito lives for up to 10 days. The female mosquito can live for up to nine weeks. Unhatched eggs can lay dormant for up to eight months. Once the eggs experience enough water, from rain, flooding, and humidity, they hatch.
There are approximately 3,500 different species of mosquitoes worldwide. Most mosquito bites are annoying, but not deadly. Only a few species transmit diseases to humans—about 12 species cause most human deaths. Mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and dengue kill millions of people, making the mosquito the greatest human killer in the world.
Mosquitoes are found in every country in the world except for Iceland and the continent of Antarctica. Scientists need to understand exactly why Iceland is mosquito-free. It could be the freezing temperatures followed by the thawing or the Icelandic soil's chemical composition. Antarctica is too cold for mosquitoes, and there is no food source that would allow mosquitoes to survive.
The countries with the greatest populations of mosquitoes (in the order of the highest populations first) are Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, and the Philippines.
The countries with the greatest number of mosquito species are Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Mosquitoes are the deadliest threat to humans. Estimated deaths caused by mosquito-borne illnesses are 2.7 million per year. Unfortunately, most of the deaths are children. Mosquitoes are responsible for billions of human deaths.
The countries with the highest rate of deaths from malaria are in Africa. These areas have high mosquito populations that transmit the disease. The top ten (in order of the most deaths) are Burkina Faso, Benin, Liberia, Mali, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Mozambique, and Guinea.
In the United States, three mosquito genera are causing most of the disease transmission problem. The Aedes genus spreads dengue fever. The Anopheles genus spreads malaria, and the Culex genus spreads the West Nile Virus.
The top ten states in the United States with the greatest mosquito population are: 1) Florida, 2) Texas, 3) Louisiana, 4) Georgia, 5) North Carolina, 6) Alabama, 7) South Dakota, 8) Oklahoma, 9) Montana, and 10) Virginia.