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Old June 25th, 2015, 09:37 AM posted to rec.travel.europe
Giovanni Drogo
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Posts: 811
Default Mosquitoes in Italy

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015, shazi wrote:

according to my experience mosquito is a problem of asia strange to
know that it does exist in italy


It depends what you mean ... mosq-uito means "little fly" in Spanish
("mosca", latin "musca" is "fly" in Italian). You probably mean the
biting and buzzing insect which in Italian is called "zanzara" (and may
correspond to various species, Culex, Aedes, Anopheles etc.). It might
be confused with Italian "moscerino" (which is a sort of diminutive of
"mosca", "fly", smaller, annoying but usually not biting), which should
correspond to "midges", the little insects found e.g. in humid areas in
Canada or Scandinavia (like Iceland where lake Myvatn takes its name
from them). A run on wikipedia toggling among various languages can be
instructive.

"zanzare" do exist in Italy, particularly in humid areas. They are
mostly of the species Culex (the complete name "culex pipiens molestus"
is very appropriate ... "annoying biting mosquito"). There are
disinfection campaigns done in late spring in cities in places where
water stagnates.

Recently there have been sights of what is called here "zanzara tigre"
(tiger mosquito), which should be Aedes Aegypti, so not of local origin.
Not sure if dangerous, possibly annoying ... it is said to bite also
during daytime, contrary to the other mosquitos. Dante himself has a
verse about "l'ora in cui la mosca cede alla zanzara" ("the hour when
flies give way to mosquitos"), referring to sunset. In fact when I used
to camp in the Alps at 1800 m in a narrow valley, as soon as the sun
went behind the mountain tops, mosquitos replaced flies.

The Anopheles mosquitos, which carried malaria, were diffuse in the past
in swampy areas like Maremma (southern Tuscany) and Paludi Pontine
(south of Rome), but the areas were dried during the fascist regime, and
the anopheles finally eradicated after WWII.