OXFORD, Miss. – You are sitting on your back porch and it’s summer time. If you do not put on some bug repellent, odds are you will get eaten alive by mosquitoes, but come wintertime the blood suckers seem to vanish out of thin air like magic. So, where do they go? According to Ole Miss Biology Professor Dr. Paul Lago, they hide.
“They just find a place to curl up during the coldest weather,” said Lago. “You will occasionally strip bark off a rotten tree and right around the edge you will find mosquitos sitting in there. And of course, that rotting wood will actually produce a little bit of heat.”
Lago says it is possible for mosquitoes to live through the winter hiding along the cracks of windows, getting heat from your house.
“It’s like hibernation but it’s not hibernation. They basically just become cold and can’t move, but if it warms up they get out and fly around. In insects it’s not called hibernation it’s called diapause.”
Someone in Mississippi has already been infected with the West Nile virus this year.
