Mosquitoes that bite you indoors - subsequent behavior?

[Stephen Tashi]

After a female mosquito that is inside a house feeds on the blood of a human occupant is there any mosquito behavior that helps it successfully get outside to lay its eggs?

(Or are there suitable places inside most homes where mosquito eggs can be laid? In the the USA, the only common indoor sources of stagnant that come to mind are the drain traps of infrequently used plumbing.)

 

[Evo]

I'm not understanding, you don't plan to whack it, you want it to lay eggs?

 

[Stephen Tashi]

I'm not understanding, you don't plan to whack it, you want it to lay eggs?

The question isn't "What to do about mosquitoes indoors?". Besides, they can bite you while you're asleep.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Hmm.

Try this. Female mosquitoes - excluding a few species - are seldom found more than a mile or so from where they were larvae. Mosquitoes are not great fliers, and get blown around by even mild breezes. So if a female gets a blood meal only at that point do eggs begin to develop. She has several days to find suitable habitat, and will persist looking until she dies or finds a suitable small blob of still water.

When out looking, she is at the mercy of the vagaries of wind currents to some degree.

This is a wobbly answer to a wobbly question. I'd refer you to a better site if I had a clue... this is one aimed at everybody. However it is California-centric:

http://www.mosquitoes.org/LifeCycle.html#anchor31858

If you have mosquitoes, there must be standing water nearby at least part of the year. Do you want behaviors, population estimates and vectors, control measures?

 

[Monique]

If only they'd fly out when they'd had their meal! I always wonder why they keep on stinging and have even tried letting them have a good filling just to be able to sleep.

The other day I was in the house of my landlord, who was out for several weeks. The thing I found in the toilet bowl... yuck, it was crawling with larvae (and I was hoping they were mosquitos).

 

[Stephen Tashi]

From Jim's link:

Aedes mosquitoes are painful and persistent biters, attacking during daylight hours (not at night). They do not enter dwellings, and they prefer to bite mammals like humans.

Culex mosquitoes are painful and persistent biters also, but prefer to attack at dusk and after dark, and readily enter dwellings for blood meals. Domestic and wild birds are preferred over man, cows, and horses.

I'd think that the behavior to enter or avoid dwellings is based on the outcome of simpler behaviors (like attraction to artificial light), not on the fact that the mosquito understands what a dwelling is.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Mosquitoes identify a meal from as much as 200m+ away. Some species primarily detect CO2, other species detect compounds like pheromones and octenol as well as CO2. One of the big reasons to avoid perfumes, cologne and makeup in general.

from: http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/publichealth/insects/mosquito.html

Female mosquitoes detect carbon dioxide emitted from warm-blooded animals over long distances. As a female flies upwind to a host, other cues play a role, including vision, moist air currents arising from a host, and specific odors emitted by a host. Mosquito repellents appear to act by masking the odor cues or by direct repellency to approaching females. Repellent products containing low concentrations (approx. 20-30%) of diethytoluamide (DEET) are known to be effective. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recommended products containing picaridin and lemon of eucalyptus as alternatives to DEET. Various other compounds such as citronella, garlic, and vitamin B are purported to be effective repellents, but research does not support this.

See Mom? Not taking a bath a for a week at camp was a good idea. You develop a protective crust which slows detection, speeds up selecting clean campers for a meal