MOSQUITOPIA This edited volume brings together natural scientists, social scientists and humanists to assess if (or how) we may begin to coexist harmoniously with the mosquito. The mosquito is humanity’s deadliest animal, killing over a million people each year by transmitting malaria, yellow fever, Zika and several other diseases. Yet of the 3,500 species of mosquito on Earth, only a few dozen of them are really dangerous—so that the question arises as to whether humans and their mosquito foe can learn to live peacefully with one another. Chapters assess polarizing arguments for conserving and preserving mosquitoes, as well as for controlling and killing them, elaborating on possible consequences of both strategies. This book provides informed answers to the dual question: could we eliminate mosquitoes, and should we? Offering insights spanning the technical to the philosophical, this is the “go to” book for exploring humanity’s many relationships with the mosquito—which becomes a journey to finding better ways to inhabit the natural world. Mosquitopia will be of interest to anyone wanting to explore dependencies between human health and natural systems, while offering novel perspectives to health planners, medical experts, environmentalists and animal rights advocates. Marcus Hall is an environmental historian and professor at the University of Zurich. In exploring changing human relationships with the natural world, Hall has turned to such subjects as restoring, rewilding, invasive species, warfare, earth art, chronobi- ology, malaria, and parasites. His books include Earth Repair, Restoration and History, Crossing Mountains, and (with Marco Armiero) Nature and History in Modern Italy. Dan Tamïr is environmental historian and research associate at the University of Zurich. His research examines the global circulation and the local adaptations of ideologies, species and resources. His current research focuses on the global political cooperation in targeting mosquito-borne diseases during the past century. Routledge Environmental Humanities Series editors: Scott Slovic (University of Idaho, USA), Joni Adamson (Arizona State University, USA) and Yuki Masami (Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan) Editorial Board Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales, Australia Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia Georgina Endfield, Liverpool, UK Jodi Frawley, University of Western Australia, Australia Andrea Gaynor, University of Western Australia, Australia Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA Iain McCalman, University of Sydney, Australia Jennifer Newell, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia International Advisory Board William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA Kirsten Wehner, University of London, UK The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, over- population, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture. The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmental challenges has shifted the epicenter of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the human-focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences. We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disci- plines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thought- ful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change. For more information about this series, please visit: www .r outle dge .c om /Ro utled ge -En viron menta l -Hum aniti es /bo ok -se ries/ REH MOSQUITOPIA The Place of Pests in a Healthy World Edited by Marcus Hall and Dan Tamïr First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Marcus Hall and Dan Tamïr; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Marcus Hall and Dan Tamïr to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www .taylorfrancis .com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hall, Marcus, 1959-editor. | Tamïr, Dan, editor. Title: Mosquitopia: the place of pests in a healthy world / edited by Marcus Hall and Dan Tamïr. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge environmental humanities | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021011825 (print) | LCCN 2021011826 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mosquitoes. | Mosquitoes–Control–Environmental aspects. | Mosquitoes as carriers of disease. Classification: LCC QL536 .M696 2022 (print) | LCC QL536 (ebook) | DDC 595.77/2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011825 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011826 ISBN: 978-0-367-52011-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-52005-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05603-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India CONTENTS List of figures viii List of contributors xii Foreword xvii PART I COULD WE (SHOULD WE) ELIMINATE MOSQUITOES? 1 1 Killing mosquitoes: Think before you swat 3 Marcus Hall and Dan Tamïr 2 The mosquito: An introduction 16 Frances M. Hawkes and Richard J. Hopkins 3 Understanding multispecies mobilities: From mosquito eradication to coexistence 32 Uli Beisel and Carsten Wergin PART II LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE 47 4 The long arc of mosquito control 49 James L.A. Webb, Jr. vi Contents 5 Domesticated Mosquitoes: Colonization and the growth of mosquito habitats in North America 61 Urmi Engineer Willoughby 6 Could we/should we eradicate mosquitoes?: The case of the yellow fever vector 73 Nancy Leys Stepan 7 Fighting nuisance on the northern fringe: Controlling mosquitoes in Britain between the World Wars 87 Peter Coates PART III KNOW THY ENEMY 107 8 The mosquito and malaria: Would mosquito control alone eliminate the disease? 109 Willem Takken 9 Living with mosquitoes in disease-free contexts: Attitudes and perceptions of risk in English wetlands 123 Adriana Ford, Mary Gearey and Tim G. Acott 10 AweWonderExcitement 144 Kerry Morrison and Helmut Lemke PART IV KNOW THYSELF 163 11 Enacting politics with mosquitoes: Beyond eradication and control 165 Jean Segata 12 Eradication against ambivalence 183 Alex Nading 13 The innocent mosquito?: The environmental ethics of mosquito eradication 195 Anna Wienhues Contents vii PART V IMPROVING HUMAN–MOSQUITO RELATIONSHIPS 211 14 Mosquito control: Success, failure and expectations in the context of arbovirus expansion and emergence 213 Isabelle Dusfour and Sarah C. Chaney 15 Designer mosquitoes?: Prospects and precautions of genome- edited insects for public health 234 Ramya M. Rajagopalan 16 The Mosquitome: A new frontier for sustainable vector control 248 Frederic Simard 17 Mosquito utopias and dystopias: A dispatch from the front lines 261 Indra Vythilingam Afterword 275 Index 284 FIGURES 1.1 A 60 × life-size model of the common house mosquito (Culex pipiens), by Alfred Keller 1937 13 2.1 The mosquito life cycle 17 2.2 An emerging male Culex pipiens 19 3.1 Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) 33 3.2 Computer monitor displaying a section of the Rhine meadows under surveillance. Colour-codes identify the surveillance and control methods used 41 3.3 Burned-out KAPS helicopter. The translated newspaper headline reads: “Danger of mosquito plague along the Rhine: helicopter of mosquito fighters burns out.” 42 4.1 Miraflores, the Panama Canal Zone: a West Indian man sprays larvicide into a ditch as part of a mosquito control programme implemented