Today’s story begins in a trap in the heart of the Guadalquivir marshes. A trap and a suspect. And, a priori, it should not surprise anyone that there is a story here: the device is part of the largest entomological surveillance operation that has ever been mounted in this country.
The problem is that the suspect we were looking for is not inside it.
The researchers were expecting a mosquito and what appeared was a midge. A two-millimeter bug that has been biting Europeans for five million years and, well, no one had noticed.
What exactly have we found? Yes, let’s leave the mystery. A few days ago, a joint team from the CSIC and the University of Milan described four species of completely unknown hematophagous midges. During the sampling they found four more (eight in total). It is interesting because this genus had never been found in Andalusia.
Gnats (from the family of Ceratopogonidae) are flies and their females feed on blood by making small cuts in the skin and releasing it from the pool that forms. Two key characteristics are that they bite during the day and live in sandy soils, dunes and marshes, where they raise their larvae. In general, they are very well-known bugs.
That’s why it’s curious, beyond the four species, that we have found them in one of the most studied places on the continent: in Doñana. The inevitable question is how come we haven’t seen them before.
Everything we are not seeing. Think about it for a moment, if in one of the best studied areas of Spain we are able to find so many new bugs, how much tiny fauna still goes completely unnoticed?
After all, gnats are annoying, but they are not dangerous. It is true that, as happens on the Tuscan coasta lack of population control of these species can ruin entire stretches of beach. We have also seen it in Menorca. But little more. Compared to mosquitoes that spread infectious (and possibly deadly) diseases, they are nothing.
And thank goodness.
Image | Pedro Miguel Aires
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