Bill Gates Declares this to be Mosquito Week

 Blogosphere, Diptera, For a Good Cause  1 Response »
Apr 292014
 

Microsoft magnate and celebrated philanthropist Bill Gates is bringing attention to mosquitoes and mosquito-born diseases in what he’s calling Mosquito Week as an homage to Discovery Channel’s yearly shark extravaganza. Modelling his outreach event after the “scary” world of sharks is pretty brilliant in my opinion, especially when you bring in the numbers of how many people are killed by sharks every year compared to how many die as a result of infected mosquito bites, which he does in this crystal clear infographic.

Infographic courtesy of GatesNotes

There are a number of interesting posts over on GatesNotes, discussing everything from Dengue Fever, to a first-hand account from someone recovering from Malaria, to a travel report from Bill & Melinda Gates on their visit to a region in Cambodia that’s infamous for breeding drug-resistant malaria strains (Ed Yong recently wrote a tremendous piece about this same area and the researchers working on the front lines of malaria control, I highly recommend you take the time to check it out as well).

The Gates Foundation has also produced a series of short, informative and visually appealing videos regarding mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit, along with a number of other visual aides that help explain the biology and impact of mosquitoes.

Now all we need is for SyFy to produce this spinoff of Sharknado and mosquitoes should be on everybody’s mind!

Me too Bill, me too. But before you start filming, please learn the difference between crane flies and mosquitoes. I am available to consult on this and any other Diptera/Entomology issues should you need it.

Bill Gates is certainly one of the most influential people on the planet, and I hope that his Mosquito Week succeeds in bringing much attention to the issue.

Aedes larva from a vernal pool outside of Guelph. Luckily for me, I have little to fear from this species aside from a few itchy bites. Unfortunately, many others across the globe are not so lucky.

Aedes larva from a vernal pool outside of Guelph. Luckily for me, I have little to fear from this species aside from a few itchy bites. Unfortunately, many others across the globe are not so lucky.

Get Zapped!

 Insects, Pop Culture  No Responses »
Jan 172013
 

Tonight on CBC (8pm local time across Canada) The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is showing ZAPPED: The Buzz About Mosquitoes, a documentary all about mosquitoes in Canada, the rising potential for mosquito-vectored disease thanks to climate change, and the ways in which Canadian scientists are working hard to stay ahead of them.

Featuring great macrovideography (which you can learn more about with the behind the scences feature on the ZAPPED website), ZAPPED has great potential to spread information and awareness about mosquitoes in Canada.

I’ll be live-tweeting the program tonight @ 8pm EST using the hashtag #CBCZapped, and I hope that if you live in Canada you’ll join me in learning more about the flies people love to hate!

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Tuesday Tunes – I Am the Fly – Wire

 Fun Stuff, Insects, Pop Culture, Tuesday Tunes  3 Responses »
Nov 292011
 

Ryan FleacrestIt’s been awhile since Tuesday Tunes featured a song about those beautiful bi-winged bugs the flies, so I think we’ll rectify that!

This isn’t the first time that Wire has been featured here on Biodiversity in Focus, with their song Outdoor Miner previously making the list. That song featured a relatively accurate depiction of a leaf miner fly, probably in the family Agromyzidae. Today’s song features flies a little closer to home, repeatedly talking about a fly in the ointment and flies causing more disease than fleas.Well, that and a divergent wasp dealing with plate-glass (side note: Flickr is fun).

So what might the flies be? Well I’m going to go with the common house fly (Musca domestica) for the fly in the ointment, just based on ubiquity and the odds of one ending up in someone’s moisturizer/tonic/soup. How about the flies causing more disease than fleas? Well, fleas are vectors for a number of diseases, with the big one being the Bubonic Plague. With an estimated 75 million people killed during the Black Death pandemic and another 12-15 million more killed in epi- and pandemics up until the mid 20th century, I think we can confidently put a back-of-the-napkin (BOTN) estimate of 100 million deaths attributable to fleas in recorded history. Tsetse flies (Glossinidae, 23 species total, 2 of which are of medical importance to humans) are vectors for the trypanosome that causes African Sleeping Sickness, which was listed as killing 48,000 people in 2008. A BOTN gives me an estimate of 100 million deaths in the last 2000 (50k x 2000 years, assuming smaller populations but higher mortality rates), so Tsetse flies are a possibility. Our next suspect might be the common house fly from earlier. Known to spread diseases such as typhoid (BOTN = 20 million deaths out of 450 million in past 2000 yrs), cholera (BOTN = 30 million deaths out of ~600 million in past 2000 yrs), and dysentery (BOTN = 50 million deaths out of 1.5 billion in past 200 yrs) among others, the house fly may be a dark horse in this race.

Of course, the best bet are the mosquitoes. With the genus Anopheles (the vector for Malaria) responsible for easily 100 million deaths in the past 200 years, not to mention the deaths attributable to Yellow Fever & Dengue Fever (Aedes aegypti) and “minor” diseases like West Nile Virus and Japanese Encephalitis (Culex). I think it’s pretty safe to say that mosquitoes are the most deadly insect known to man!

Anyways, that was a pretty morbid tangent from the song, so let’s just listen to some music shall we?

 

 

(All estimates based on conservative values found in Wikipedia. Some estimates may be horribly off, so best to do a more thorough literature check if you need more reliable numbers!)

This song is available on iTunes – I Am the Fly – Chairs Missing (Remastered)

Buy a T-Shirt, Prevent Malaria

 For a Good Cause, Fun Stuff, Pop Culture  1 Response »
Nov 042011
 

I’m not the most fashionable guy, but I love me a good graphic T-shirt, especially if it’s got an insect in the design. I’ve accumulated a fairly decent collection of shirts featuring all manner of insects and other nature nerdery, and proudly wear them each day to work/meetings/conferences/family functions/etc. A simple style, sure, but they usually get a smile out of people, and they’re super comfortable!

Which is why I absolutely LOVE a new campaign by the good people at Threadless.com (my favourite T-shirt vendor),  UNICEF, and New York artists Justin & Christine Gignac to raise money for humanitarian aid in the Horn of Africa.

It’s simple; make a donation to UNICEF to cover the exact cost of an aid item, and receive a cool t-shirt with the item you donated on the front. For example, donate $18.57 to cover the cost of an insecticide-treated mosquito net used to prevent Malaria transmission, and you’ll receive this entomologically AWESOME t-shirt!

Can you say win? 100% of the donation goes directly to UNICEF and is converted into the item you donated, and there is a wide variety of items you can donate, ranging in price from $18.57 for the mosquito net to $300,000 for a cargo flight full of relief. To sweeten the pot for a limited time, Threadless will ship you your shirts for free (even internationally) if you spend more than $50! So for $54 you could provide 3 families with a safe place to sleep free of mosquitoes carrying Malaria, Dengue Fever or other deadly diseases, you get a really cool T-shirt for yourself and 2 others to give away to those hard-to-buy-for entomologists on your Christmas shopping list (trust me, they’d love this)!

Check out the video below further explaining the project, and then click over to Threadless.com to donate today!

 

Good Shirts for the Horn of Africa from Threadless.com on Vimeo.

Good Shirts do good. The design on each shirt symbolizes the type of aid UNICEF is delivering in the Horn of Africa. 100% of your donation will go to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support life saving relief efforts for children. Good Shirts is a collaboration between UNICEF, BBH New York, and Threadless. Illustrations by Christine and Justin Gignac.

http://www.Threadless.com/UNICEF