Do mosquitoes and flies fly at the same height?

[Mk]

How high do mosquitoes fly? How high do flies fly? From the ground I mean.

I read a source that said mosquitoes tend to bite people less than 25 feet up. That was the American Mosquito Control Association or something like that. Flies the same?

 

[russ_watters]

On purpose, yeah, but I heard once that every now and then a storm will inject some insects into the stratosphere.

Dunno about that 25 feet thing, though.

 

[Moonbear]

Oh, about 20,000 feet...when one sneaks onto a plane.

Okay, now where did my "more than you ever wanted to know about mosquitoes" link go? Oh, here it is: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/mosbiol.htm

Shoot! I don't see anything about how high they fly. They don't seem to have any sort of mosquito myths page either. I don't know how high they can fly, but since mosquitoes tend to swarm around water and moist locations, it sounds fairly reasonable that most people are bitten while near the ground.

 

[Genecks]

Perhaps like bees they only fly high to mate, otherwise I would go with moonbear on the idea that they stay low to ground based on the fact there is blood down there.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't know how high they can fly, but since mosquitoes tend to swarm around water and moist locations, it sounds fairly reasonable that most people are bitten while near the ground.

Well, there is that, plus the fact that not a whole lot of people can fly more than 25 feet above the ground (personally, I've made it up to 80 feet, but my arms get tired pretty quick).

 

[Moonbear]

Well, there is that, plus the fact that not a whole lot of people can fly more than 25 feet above the ground (personally, I've made it up to 80 feet, but my arms get tired pretty quick).

I was thinking more about high rise buildings. I've heard something similar before about mosquitoes not flying above the 3rd floor of buildings, and am pretty sure it was myth, but don't have anything to support or refute it.

 

[Ouabache]

I liked the bit about the mosquito sneaking onto a plane going up 20,000 feet

But more seriously, here is a quote from the AMCA site.
"Mosquitoes that bite humans prefer to fly at heights of less than 25 ft. Asian Tiger Mosquitoes have been found breeding in treeholes over 40 feet above ground. In Singapore, they have been found in apartments 21 stories above ground. Mosquitoes have been found breeding up to 14,000 feet in the Himalayas and 2000 feet underground in mines in India." http://www.mosquito.org/FAQ-Conlon.php (The American Mosquito Control Association)

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

How high do mosquitoes fly? How high do flies fly? From the ground I mean.
I read a source that said mosquitoes tend to bite people less than 25 feet up. That was the American Mosquito Control Association or something like that. Flies the same?

Well I have a buddy that has an apt on the 20th level and there have been Mosquitos on the balcony

 

[Reshma]

Well I have a buddy that has an apt on the 20th level and there have been Mosquitos on the balcony

They probably took the elevator!

 

[Mk]

Well I have a buddy that has an apt on the 20th level and there have been Mosquitos on the balcony

One of the retarded mosquitos probably got up there and laid eggs in his "Effect of sunlight on water" experiments.

 

[ssqware]

Check out this link for a good argument on the subject.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sakae/canmosquitoesflyhigh.htm

 

[x-treme]

anopheles,the vector of malaria goes up to 500 m...no malaria case is seen over this height...i heard this during a lesson!

 

[ssqware]

yes, but just because they don't happen to be in high places it doesn't mean they can't get there. Observance and capability are two different things. I suggest you check out http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sakae/canmosquitoesflyhigh.htm to settle the argument. MOSQUITOES CAN FLY HIGH!

 

[Mk]

Couldn't we just keep lowering the pressure in a contained space until all the mosquitoes can't fly? Then that would definitely be the upper limit.

 

[vanesch]

I've heard something similar before about mosquitoes not flying above the 3rd floor of buildings, and am pretty sure it was myth, but don't have anything to support or refute it.

This is definitely not true. I live on the 10th floor and we regularly have mosquitos. Maybe this is due because behind the building where I have my appartment, a mountain raises (I'm facing a high-sloped forest at the back), but the horizontal distance to the side of the mountain is bigger than the direct distance to the floor (the height).

 

[rachmaninoff]

Check out this link for a good argument on the subject.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sakae/canmosquitoesflyhigh.htm

yes, but just because they don't happen to be in high places it doesn't mean they can't get there. Observance and capability are two different things. I suggest you check out this to settle the argument. MOSQUITOES CAN FLY HIGH!

That's an awful link with poorly-reasoned arguments and no useful information, in fact written by an undergraduate in business school.

Many claims of animal endurance seem beyond comprehension but actually can and do happen. Some television shows, such as Ripley's Believe it or Not, actually make a living by displaying such mind-blowing spectacles. If an ant can carry 100 times its body weight, a spider can make the strongest substance known to science and a monarch butterfly can span the pacific ocean during migration, then really, is it that difficult to believe that mosquitoes fly high?

Therefore, the summation of a mosquito's tiny vertical movements can eventually equal the distance needed to scale a tall building. Also supporting this claim is the fact that the force of gravity weakens at higher altitudes, thus making the mosquito's climb even easier.

 

[rachmaninoff]

From http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no4/adobe/malakooti.pdf, U. of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland:

Unlike the parasite, the mosquito vector can
commonly be found at altitudes from >1,600 m
(3,4) to 3,000 m, demonstrating that the limiting
factor for malaria transmission at high altitude
is the survival of the Plasmodium parasite.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no4/adobe/malakooti.pdf

 

[rachmaninoff]

Even more relevant, this shows how high mosquitos fly relative to the ground below them (from an abstract by Kay, B.H. and Farrow, R.A., published in J. of Medical Entomology):

To investigate whether this species disperses in this manner, mosquitoes were identified from 368 aerial kite trap collections operated at 50–310 m (altitude) at inland New South Wales between November 1979 to December 1984. Forty samples (9 during daylight and 31 at night) contained mosquitoes, of which 221 could be identified as Culex australicus Dobrotworsky & Drummond (58.8%), Culex annulirostris (21.3%), Anopheles annulipes Walker s.l. (10.4%), Aedes theobaldi (Taylor) (7.2%), Aedes rubrithorax (Macquart) (1.4%), and Aedes sagax (Skuse) (<0.9%).

http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=get-document&issn=0022-2585&volume=037&issue=06&page=0797

 

[ssqware]

What say you?

That's an awful link with poorly-reasoned arguments and no useful information, in fact written by an undergraduate in business school.

Well, you display your displeasure with the argument, yet you don't give any support as to why they are "poorly-reasoned." You mearly just re-quote what has already been said. Sounds to me like your rebuttle is the one that is poorly reasoned!

 

[Mk]

He bolded the part where it said "force of gravity weakens at higher altitudes," in this small of a magnitude of distance, it wouldn't matter.