A warmer environment could mean more mosquitoes as it becomes harder for their predators to control the population, according to a recent study led by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. As the cover feature in Ecology, a journal published by the Ecological Society of America, the study -- "Warming and Top-Down Control of Stage-Structured Prey: Linking Theory to Patterns in Natural Systems" -- found that rising temperatures, often linked to climate change, can make predators of mosquito larvae less effective at controlling mosquito populations.

The researchers looked at riverine rock pools at Belle Isle along the James River in Richmond and found that warmer temperature pools had more aquatic mosquito larvae, even when their predators that naturally control the populations were present. The native rock pool mosquito is not an important disease vector, but it is one of the few local mosquitoes that doesn't have to feed as an adult to lay eggs. So the findings might apply to similar taxa, like the invasive Asian rock pool mosquito.

While the mosquito larvae we studied here [are] the North American rock pool mosquito, these findings likely apply to species of mosquito that do act as vectors for diseases like West Nile or even Zika virus. Predators help stabilize ecosystems and food webs, and the study looked at predator-prey interaction between dragonfly nymphs and mosquito larvae. Before field work, the research was rooted in concepts of thermal physiology and short-term lab experiments that yielded predictive models of the relationship between predators, prey and temperature in the field. The field study then tested the models in a complete natural environment.