We also spoke to Bautista about something that came from the swamp, a swarm of curious flying insects that look a lot like mosquitoes except they're not, they're called "midges" - and they are swarming right now in coastal areas.
The good news is they're the non-biting kind.
But if they've been buzzing around your house, or blanketing your ceilings in swarms, and forcing you to break out the Baygon you'll be happy to know that they won't be around much longer. Bautista told us why:
Kim Bautista, Chief of Operations, Vector Control
"We received concerns from residents, from communities along the coast, including some neighborhoods along the shoreline in Belize City, whereby they were complaining about a proliferation of which we confirmed to be a type of midge. So there are several hundred species of midge both biting and non-biting and what we're seeing is a high number of non-biting midges. So, I think that when we reviewed the situation, what contributed to this high proliferation of midges is that post-flooding you had many areas that remained inundated and some muddy areas that didn't have much water but still remained quite saturated, and so when you combine that with the effects of the cool water that we've been receiving, I think we've had multiple cold fronts it's the ideal temperature for midges to
thrive. So, that's basically what we're seeing sometimes what also contributes to that high population is if you have any population of predators whether it's dragonflies or any other insects that feed on the midges, if that population is affected then you would have the midge population thrive while the other one is suppressed. So I think we should expect to see the situation at least for another couple of days. I think the lifespan tends to be fairly short about 3 to 5 days. And we've had our staff on the ground doing both larval control and adult control using our foggers so I belive that the situation should improve in the coming days."
Bautista says that in the case of the midge's, unlike the Aedes mosquito, it's doubtful that the situation is a result of water filled containers on these premises, and more to do with the thriving of Midge populations breeding in Mangrove and other swampy areas.
