Pest control: Companies expect an increase in mosquitoes – 05/31/2023 – Market

Pest control companies are developing ways to combat the growing number of mosquitoes carrying deadly diseases such as malaria and dengue fever in new areas of the world as a result of climate change.

Rising temperatures have led to the spread of mosquito and mosquito-borne diseases to higher altitudes and areas of the developed world where they were previously not prevalent.

Local transmission of dengue has been reported in several European countries, including France, Spain, Croatia and Italy, as well as parts of the United States and Japan.

Rentokil Initial, the world’s largest pest control provider, recently installed a “blood room” at its UK innovation center to study the behavior of mosquitoes and other insects, which “will increase our knowledge and expertise for years to come” , said chief executive Andy Ransom.

Rentokil forecasts that the global mosquito control market will expand from US$1.6 billion in 2021 to US$2.1 billion by 2026, an estimated compound annual growth rate of 5.8%.

The blood room housed mosquitoes that “adapted well” to the facility, “where we fed them human blood from a blood donation service,” Rentokil said.

“In Europe, the current trend is to see ‘Aedes albopictus’ [o mosquito-tigre asiático] moving north, mainly in Italy, southern France and Spain,” Ransom said. The Asian tiger mosquito is a transmission vector for several pathogens, including dengue, yellow fever, zika and chikungunya.

The pest control group uses mosquito larvicides to remove breeding sites from small bodies of water and targeted spraying of adulticides – a different type of insecticide – to kill mature mosquitoes from undergrowth.

Rentokil’s vector control company, Vector Disease Control International, warned that diseases carried by mosquitoes and bed bugs “are at the forefront of growing concerns about climate change”.

The Wellcome Trust, a health research charity, said it predicts that disease-carrying mosquitoes will reach up to 500 million more people than currently do by 2050. It is estimated that more than 1 billion people would be at risk of malaria, dengue, zika, chikungunya and many other diseases by 2080. The foundation said it is developing an open source database to track these climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

Felipe Colón, data technology lead for science and health at the Wellcome Trust, said climate change has also increased the spread of other pests, such as termites.

Northern regions of the US are experiencing termites in places that have not been previously reported, according to Orkin, a subsidiary of US pest control group Rollins.

“There’s a termite called the Formosa subterranean termite that’s found in the southeastern United States. There are also some in California and Hawaii — they tend to be in warmer areas,” said Benjamin Hottel, manager of technical services for Orkin. “There was a recent find in the Norfolk, Virginia area. That’s the farthest north they’ve ever been.”

Last year was the sixth warmest year on record since 1880, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Temperatures rose by at least 1.1°C in the industrial age.

Experts also cautioned that it is difficult to predict how the breeding cycles of insects such as mosquitoes would respond to changes in climate.

“As the temperature increases, the suitability for this process to work increases and there is usually an ideal range, but when it gets too hot the process can also stop,” said Kris Murray, professor of environmental change and health at the Gambia (Africa ) of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Medical Research Council.

“A warmer climate can accelerate the life cycle of temperature-dependent species,” he added. “If it’s an organism that can complete more life cycles in, say, a year, due to more suitable temperatures brought about by climate change, that might make it more likely to establish itself in a new location if it’s introduced or if there are already populations. bigger there.”

Murray noted that climate change is predicted to have a greater impact on average in reducing species diversity and abundance. But it also made conditions in some European countries more hospitable to invasive insects.

“There are parts of Europe that were previously too cold to support the mosquito very well. Climate change is warming them up and making them a bit more suitable, [então] mosquitoes may be better able to establish themselves or survive there,” he said.

There are about 3,600 known species of mosquitoes. The Asian tiger mosquito’s native range is in Southeast Asia, but it has been spreading since the 1960s and was discovered in Albania in 1979. It is now present in much of southern and central Europe.

“Last year, France recorded its highest number of dengue cases that were vectored [pelo mosquito-tigre asiático]” said Steven White, a theoretical ecologist at the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology.

The presence of this mosquito in the UK was discovered in 2017. “It was likely that the mosquitoes were introduced across the Channel by transport, however it is not believed that they were able to establish themselves,” White said. “That could change in the near future due to climate change.”

Another type of concern is the common house mosquito, the “Culex pipiens”. “This species is a UK resident, our modeling work indicates it is likely to increase in abundance,” White said.

“Culex pipiens is a West Nile virus vector, which is currently absent in the UK but can be introduced via migratory birds,” he added. “Our work suggests that rising temperatures may make West Nile virus outbreaks in the UK more likely in the coming decades.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto Gonçalves