Mosquitoes have also landed in Iceland, one of the few places where they were missing

Now even in Iceland, one of the last paradises free from mosquitoes, you will wake up at night disturbed by their buzzing: on 21 October the Icelandic Institute of Natural Sciences confirmed the first sighting of mosquitoes in nature and outdoors on the island, among the few places on Earth that have so far remained free of the insect. Three specimens of Culiseta annulataa typical species of Northern Europe, allowed themselves to be lured by a rope soaked in red wine to a farm not far from Reykjavík, the capital.

For those of us who have to deal with mosquitoes even in October, the readable description, in translation, on the Icelandic Institute’s website almost makes us smile: “The species is widespread throughout Europe and can survive the winter in sheltered places” – a sentence that denotes the lack of familiarity with these insects among Icelanders. There are various theories as to why Iceland has so far been blessed with mosquitoes.

In the country there is certainly no shortage of humid and stagnant places where they can nest, and the climate – although often harsh – does not reach the extremes of freezing of other countries where mosquitoes are present, such as Norway, Denmark, Greenland, Scotland. The most accepted hypothesis so far is that what keeps mosquitoes away is Iceland’s oceanic climate, characterized by extreme variability.

Typically, in cold countries, mosquito larvae emerge with the thaw, but in Iceland there are typically three major freezes and thaws per year – too unstable a situation for these insects. Another possibility is that the chemical composition of the soil and water of this volcanic land is not optimal for mosquitoes.

Behind the new sighting there would be the dizzying increase in international tourism and the milder temperatures favored by global warming. Planes, cruise ships and other means provide mosquitoes with passage and it is likely that the three specimens found – near the capital – also arrived on a flight from abroad in recent times. Moreover, the only previous sighting of a mosquito in Iceland had occurred in the 1980s in an Icelandic airport: that time, however, the solitary mosquito was found indoorson a plane just arrived from Greenland.

Milder temperatures are making Iceland more habitable for mosquitoes and could favor a more stable settlement of species arriving from abroad. There is no shortage of precedents: the Ceratopogonidae, biting midges better known as “midges”, in the Nordic countries, established themselves in Iceland only a decade ago, and thanks to the warmer temperatures, they quickly settled almost everywhere.

In 2019, the funeral of a glacier, Okjokull, which completely melted due to global warming, was held in Iceland. And in recent years, in spring, unusually high temperatures have been recorded on the island, compared to the average of the first months of the year, with harmful effects on ecosystems, calibrated to the times of cold climates.