Georgetown University biologist Colin Carlson and colleagues used one of the most comprehensive datasets ever compiled by medical entomologists to track the outer reaches of mosquito distribution in Africa over 120 years.mosquitos between 1898 and 2016. In that time, the world has warmed by at least 1.2 degrees Celsius, opening new areas suitable to mosquitos.mosquitos have spread southward by 4.7 kilometers every year, and risen 6.5 meters in elevation each year.
"This is exactly what we would expect to see if climate change is helping these species reach colder parts of the continent,""Up to this point," Carlson tells Science Alert,"most work on climate change and malaria has focused on the dynamics of malaria transmission itself. Here, we're taking a step back and saying, climate change might be independently affecting mosquitos and spreading them around before we even get to the malaria part of the story.
It's expected that climate change will not only expand the range of mosquitos but also lengthen the time each year when they are out in force.are probably moving in a similar way, but only by collecting data can we begin to understand just how far they may go. "We tend to assume that these shifts are happening all around us, but the evidence base is fairly limited,"