just give me the signal good evening my name is tim pratt i am the chair of the shoreview environmental quality committee and it's our pleasure to have you join us this evening in for our environmental speaker series we're actually here in person in the uh city council chambers for the first time in well over two years uh but don't get used to it because actually next month will be just virtual but we've got a great presentation for you this evening but first i want to mention uh one of the other big projects that we do is the green community awards program so that's where we recognize folks who put in shoreline buffers or replace turf grass with native plantings put in solar panels they put in geothermal heating cooling systems so if you are interested please go to the website and fill out the application online and submit it you've got until june so you may not be in the mood quite yet because of the weather but it's going to warm up and the blossoms are going to come popping out of the ground so please uh check that out so uh tonight we've got a great presentation about the metropolitan mosquito control district and let me just read a little introduction here of course it's called minnesota mosquitoes what's bugging you and in minnesota and around the world mosquitoes are not only a nuisance but are capable of spreading diseases and we know that quite well here in shoreview a former council member larry morrissette died of encephalitis back in 2008 now we don't know exactly how larry contracted it uh encephalitis but one of the means of transmission is through mosquito bites so it is something that we need to be aware of and in this presentation alex carlson from the metropolitan mosquito control district is going to introduce some of the species found in our part of the country and explain how the district monitors for disease and controls mosquitoes along with environmental precautions taken to keep minnesota's minnesotans healthy now who is alex you say well alex carlson is the public affairs manager of the metropolitan mosquito control district which is based in st paul where he leads public outreach efforts now and he's the one who wrote this bio enjoys talking to everyone from elementary school students to elected officials about mosquitoes ticks and black lives so very specific skill set which i'm sure uh ensures job security um but when not talking about bugs he enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife and two kids so please uh join me in welcoming alex carlson thank you very much and thank you very much for that intro and i'm honored to be the first in person presentation in over two years and i know we're here in april we're not necessarily thinking about bugs yet but they're coming and that's what we're here for so in this presentation today i'm going to be covering a lot of ground but i encourage people if you're viewing uh this online and you want to share a question or or a comment use the chat feature on zoom and i'll be able to answer questions throughout you don't have to hold your questions to the end and i'll do my best to answer as we go and i want to give credit in this presentation to some input that i got from our executive director dr stephen manweiler and uh dr nancy reed who both been with mmcd for a long time and other mmc's mmcd staff member who provided input as well there we go so in today's presentation i'm going to do an overview of who we are at mmcd talk about mosquitoes in minnesota including their life cycle and habitat some specific species and then talking about diseases integrated pest management what is that and why is that so important to us i'll talk about some environmental precautions specifically related to bees butterflies and other pollinators some of the biggest concerns that people bring up to us and talk about what we're doing to mitigate those risks and then some of our maps and i always like to end our presentations with mosquito control tips the most common question that we get is what can we do to prevent mosquitoes from overwhelming our yard or our business and so i'll end up with some tips for both personal protection and homeowner guides so mmcd has been around since 1958 we were established by a state statute and we served the seven counties in the metro area you can see on the map there and our governance is the elected county commissioners so each county has their elected representatives they each serve a term on our board so they're the final stamp for our budget they oversee our operations and they meet with with us monthly to review everything that we're doing which i think is a really good system because it's elected representatives that oversee our operations so if people have major concerns or anything like that they can talk to their elected officials our service area is 2 900 square miles we serve over 3 million people where the land of 10 000 lakes and even more ponds and swamps and all that stuff so we have 70 000 wetland habitats that we monitor 30 000 woodland habitats and we're funded by property taxes we're considered a special taxing district so when you get your property tax statement around this time of year you see a little thing in there that says special taxing districts and that's where we fall under so minnesota mosquitoes it's been they've been referred to as our state bird before lovingly because we have a lot of mosquitoes in minnesota there's actually 3 000 species of mosquitoes worldwide here in minnesota the kinds that can survive our climate we have about 52 species that are established here and we find recurring year after year only about 15 of those species though are what we consider species of concern meaning they're human biting species or they're a public health risk because they can potentially carry diseases so if you think about that that's most of the mosquitoes that we have here aren't ones that were a primary concern for us mosquitoes bite a lot of people or a lot of species besides humans there's certain mosquitoes that only bite birds only bite frogs or other species so we really focus on the ones that are risk to humans to really understand mosquito control it helps to understand the mosquito life cycle so this image kind of just shows the steps i always compare it when i talk to elementary school students i say the mosquitoes are like a caterpillar maybe not as beautiful when they emerge from their cocoon but it start with the egg and then the egg hatches in the water and becomes the larva which is like the caterpillar where they're feeding out a lot of different things and then they become the pupa which is like the cocoon or chrysalis they're no longer feeding and that's where they're developing their wings and legs and stuff like that and then they emerge as the adult mosquito that's similar to the butterfly stage although i think people like butterflies and mosquitoes not so much so kind of going into more detail about those the way that the mosquitoes in minnesota work there's a lot of different species that have a slightly different life cycle but it's pretty much an overall theme emerges the eggs are either laid individually on soil near water which are species that fall into the 80s categorization or they're in rafts directly on standing water which is the culex species of mosquitoes so mosquitoes have biological sensors where they can detect where water is going to be uh they're heavily reliant on standing water so the most common species we have they'll lay their eggs right on the edges of a pond or a swamp uh and that's where when the rain comes in it washes the eggs into the water and that's where they hatch and then the larva emerges the eggs can actually survive unhatched for up to seven years which is kind of mind-blowing we get this question a lot last year was a really dry year the big story of 2021 was there was a lot of mosquitoes because there wasn't a lot of rain and some people are like does that mean it's a good thing for 2022 but not necessarily because those eggs are still there if we have a rainy year this year or in the next couple of years they'll be right back to where we were the after the eggs the larva emerge there's four different stages of larva called in stars so they get a little bit bigger they shed their exoskeleton and uh they emerge to a different size they're filter feeders they feed on bacteria yeast algae the larva stage is usually four days to 14 days really dependent on the water temperature so early this time of year we're already starting to find larvae but the larva we're finding now aren't going to emerge for you know another month or so uh because the water temperature is too cold it slows down everything in july when the water temperature is warm they'll only be in the larva stage for four or five days then the pupa which is the tumblers they're called because they still kind of tumble around near the surface of the water at this stage they're no longer feeding they're developing their adult mosquito parts this day is about one to two days and then they emerge from the water as adult mosquitoes in the case of the female mosquitoes they go seeking a blood meal which they need the blood in order to reproduce and then the males go in search of flower nectar and other sources of sugar just to survive females can live two to three months they can live all summer long males typically live only about 15 to 30 days like i said there's 52 species in minnesota i don't have time to go into all of them in details but there's a couple that are really important i think to know about if you want to really understand what's bugging you as the title of this presentation says um the most common mosquito we have is the summer flood water mosquito or the 80s vac sands it's a rainwater mosquito so when the rain comes their eggs hatch they they're in the water for a couple days and then they emerge so that's why we always see the most high mosquito activity you know about a week or so after a heavy rainfall they lay their eggs next to the water and we see a lot of these usually when you're swat mosquitoes it's probably a summer flood water mosquito hulex mosquitoes aren't quite as common but they're the species that we're most concerned with because they're the primary vector of west nile virus in minnesota which is the most common mosquito-borne disease the this is a fun one to say cochleatidia per turbines the cattail mosquito it took me about two years working at mmcd to spell that right on the first try but the cattail mosquitoes are really unique species that we have here because they actually only emerge once per year right around the 4th of july they lay their eggs in the fall they hatch right before winter and then they attach to the root of cattails where they get their name from and then they overwinter as larva and then they emerge next fourth of july uh so usually when we see a big surge of mosquitoes around the fourth of july a lot of those will be cattail mosquitoes these are a little bit bigger mosquitoes and they're very aggressive human biting mosquitoes so that's why fourth of july picnics can get swarmed so easily and then the final one that i want to mention is the 80s triceratus or the treehole mosquito it's a container breeding mosquito and the reason this one's of concern to us is it potentially can carry lacrosse encephalitis another mosquito-borne disease it gets its name as you can probably guess because it enjoys warm dark areas like tree holes waste tires stuff like that is where it typically reproduces is one of my favorite slides let's do some mosquito math now that you kind of have the basics let's take one mosquito who gets the blood meal as 300 eggs and then 150 of those are female second generation comes along those 150 females plus the mom who's still around lay 151 egg rafts 300 eggs 45 300 mosquitoes half of those are females look at that third generation 22 650 times 300 6 million 795 000 mosquitoes you see where this is going fourth generation three and a half million mosquitoes times 300 you're at 1.3 billion mosquitoes all from one female mosquito all in less than a month from the reproduction cycle obviously not all the mosquitoes survive and not all the eggs will hatch but just kind of goes to show you if given the right conditions mosquitoes really can flourish and so we really do have our work cut out for us it doesn't take a long time for mosquitoes to really kind of overwhelm an environment uh so we do our best to keep the population in check and make areas where a lot of human population are livable so the mosquito habitat uh there's a variety of different habitats but the main thing that mosquitoes need are standing water shallow standing water so we have a lot of lakes but lakes aren't really the primary mosquito habitat because they're big they're the water's not shallow there's predators and stuff like that that'll eat the mosquito we see we see a lot more mosquito reproduction in ponds and swamps and or if you look at that top picture of a lake the edges of the lake where there's kind of protected from the wind it's shallower that's where you'll see mosquito production so there's permanent water sites those areas that hold water pretty much year round even in dry years then you have the flood water sites those are the areas that are designed to flood after the rain a lot of cities you know they design runoffs to get the water away from housing areas and communities but then it has to go somewhere and so we monitor the area where the water runs off to and then we create a lot of mosquito habitat with our garbage and with our lifestyles so tree holes containers anything that we leave out waste tires buckets bird baths stuff like that and catch basins on the side of the road can be a big mosquito habitat those are designed to catch debris that's going down the sewer system but by design they also have a lot of water that just sits there all summer long so we do a lot of monitoring those types of habitats and just education to encourage people don't leave water out in your yard make sure you check your yard after a rainfall to make sure that it's not collecting things because we've found mosquito larvae and very we found mosquito larva in a bottle cap that's been filled with water really they don't need a lot especially in a dry year like last year when there's not a lot of other water sources they'll find any water and reproduce so make sure you're checking clearing gutters stuff like that so the real reason for mosquito control obviously we want to make a communities livable and not be overwhelmed by mosquitoes but our main charge the first part of our mission statement is to protect people from mosquito-borne disease because mosquito mosquitoes are actually the deadliest creatures on earth i don't think there are any horror movies about mosquitoes there's lots about sharks and snakes and stuff like that but really mosquitoes are what people should be scared of uh because mosquitoes kill more human beings than any other species on earth there's a really cool book for any history buffs called the mosquito a human history of our deadliest predator by historian timothy weingart and he basically goes through several major world conflicts and looks at the roles that mosquitoes played in basically changing world history uh just an example alexander the great historians believe was killed by malaria just imagine how different the world map would look if it wouldn't been for mosquitoes and taking down one of the the great conquerors so um fun fun reading if anybody's interested in that but worldwide the diseases that are of concern malaria is the big one dengue fever yellow fever and to a lesser extent recently zika but that was a big kind of the big story in 2016. here in minnesota we have west nile virus jamestown canyon virus eastern equine encephalitis or triple e lacrosse encephalitis and dog heartworm there's a couple others that are even more rare but those are kind of the ones that we are concerned with at mmcd so i'm going to go into some of the diseases a little more specifically just to kind of give some general information but by far the the most common mosquito-borne disease is west nile virus the culex mosquito is the most likely vector of this it's a species that mainly feeds on birds but also does feed on human beings and horses from time to time and that's how the disease is spread so if you look on the bottom right there there's kind of a image of the west nile transmission cycle mosquitoes to birds some birds can carry west nile virus without being impacted other birds have a high mortality rate especially corvids ravens blue jays and crows so a lot of times a flock of dead crows in an area is a symptom that there's west nile activity in the area and we need to make sure that we're being cautious it's a disease that can't be spread we're a dead end host so it can't be spread from person to person you can only get it from an infected mosquito um but it's a disease that we're concerned about 2018 was kind of the last year where there was widespread west nile virus there's a map from the cdc where you can kind of see um the difference is 2021 there was uh fewer cases but it was still present in the twin cities a couple cases right here in the metro that we were monitoring fortunately there were no deaths in 2021 from west nile virus but you'd see north dakota and south dakota have a lot of cases they just have really good habitat for culex mosquitoes in those areas so that's why they see so many cases lacrosse encephalitis is a disease that affects children primarily uh it's a disease that can be spread um usually the lacrosse encephalitis mosquito doesn't fly very far from its hatch site so usually we can control this disease by removing habitat where they could potentially reproduce so this is the treehole mosquito that i mentioned earlier that spreads this disease so they're commonly found in tree holes and waste tires small mammals are the vertebrate hosts chipmunks and squirrels and then same thing humans are the dead end host this is a transovarial disease meaning that when the mosquitoes lay the eggs those mosquitoes that hatch are also carrying the disease whereas west nile mosquitoes can only get it from biting an infected bird these when the eggs can hatch carrying the disease so we try to eliminate any habitat in areas where left lacrosse is found it's pretty rare there hasn't been a lacrosse case in the past couple of years but it can be very harmful if it does impact children one of the diseases that's kind of the new kid on the block in a sense uh eastern equine encephalitis or triple e there's never been a human case in minnesota but it's something that we're monitoring very closely because it's such a dangerous disease um it's it's extremely rare but and it typically affects forces but there's a 30 mortality rate in humans and 90 in horses there's a vaccine available for horses so people who own horses are encouraged to get their horses vaccinated there's no vaccine available for humans in 2019 there were 39 human cases mainly in michigan and connecticut where they had big outbreaks um and it was really a kind of a dangerous situation uh the vector species is the kulasita melanora and this one they say there's a bridge species meaning it's not the melanora mosquito that's fighting people it's the cattail mosquito is they believe the culprit was in those two outbreaks um the cattail mosquito bought the saint or bit the same host that the melanoma mosquito bit and then bit a person and that's how it was spread there were positive force cases of eastern equine encephalitis in two northern minnesota counties last year and so that's why this is a concern for us there hasn't been any human cases but there have been horse cases in minnesota so we know that there's disease activity in our area other diseases that we look out for jamestown canyon it's a spread by a spring mosquito species there's 23 human cases in 2019 no reported in 2020 i believe there were a few in 2021 but not many um it's not it's an another type of encephalitis it can be harmful for people with pre-existing conditions but it's not very common and the dog heartworm a lot of people don't know that heart worm is actually a mosquito-borne disease so in fact get your pets vaccinated and make sure you're taking precautions to protect them all right so now we know why mosquitoes are something that we need to be concerned about and why we do miss mosquito control so now i'm going to talk about our approach to mosquito control at mmcd so we practice what's called integrated pest management mosquito control agencies across the country have embraced integrated pest management or also known as integrated mosquito management but it basically means that mosquito control decisions should be driven by surveillance and monitoring so that there's a lot of steps that being done and then you want to control mosquitoes in the least toxic way possible so you're the most effective way with the least toxic way possible and so this is a visual that we made to kind of show the steps of ipm or integrated pest management we do we plan monitor identify control evaluate and then educate and that's kind of the order that we go to starting with planning working our way kind of around the hexagons there but we also have a technical advisory board a tab review committee that reviews our practices annually and so this is made up of representatives from the u of m uh various state agencies like the department of health the dnr as well as state agencies like the u.s fish and wildlife service and the epa they review all that we do in a meeting over the month over the course of the month of february um we present a large reports to them and they kind of look at what we're doing and they also examine us against other mosquito control agencies to make sure that we're still doing the best methods possible and they kind of make sure that they're looking at our operations from a scientific lens our full tab report is available on our website if anybody's interested in really getting into the science behind it it's got some pretty cool stuff all right so i'm kind of going to work my way around these these steps of ipm so step one is the surveillance good mosquito control is surveillance driven usually when people see us out in their community if they see people with the mosquito control vests on or see our trucks driving around usually they're out doing surveillance that's most of what we do is figuring out what's out there before we figure out how to respond to it so we have our field staff go out and they put on the waders and they go out to ponds and wetlands and they check for the presence of larva so usually our our big biggest activity period is right after a heavy rainfall usually about an inch of rain or more that can trigger a brood hatch so then we send our crews out to the site that we know are rainwater sites where there's probably going to be larva they can check the larva they use a long-handled dipper they'll get a count for how many larvae they find in a site by taking a small sample and then estimating based on the size of the site and then they'll also get a vial sample that they send back to our lab in st paul we also use mosquito traps and sweep net collections to collect adult mosquitoes this is something that i get to do which is really fun every monday night in the summer months i get to stand in my front yard with a net and i wait for a minute for the mosquitoes to come by me and then i sweep over my head and around me for two and a half minutes and try to catch all the mosquitoes i can and then i put it in my freezer and bring it to the lab the next day uh it's for science i look weird to my neighbors but it's getting good data but then we also set up traps around the twin cities there on the bottom left is one of our co2 traps it has a small amount of dry ice in it so it mimics the the co2 that a person gives off when they're breathing that's how it attracts mosquitoes and then there's a fan attached to it and it sucks the mosquitoes and pulls them into that net so we set those out every monday night about 200 total traps around the twin cities to really give us kind of a snapshot of that moment in time what does the mosquito situation look like and we put we post these on our website so you can kind of see from week to week you know what's currently going on with mosquitoes so once we get those collections we bring them back to our lab in st paul so we have an entomology lab overseen by our technical services department which is run by entomologists they work with the field staff to identify the samples that are brought in the larval samples when those are brought in they're identified to determine if they're a species that merits treatment like i said at the beginning not every species is one that's going to be a human biting species so they can check the larva to ensure that they're a species that merits a treatment and then also in instances where there's a lot of mosquito production we can identify by species to focus on the disease vectors first and make sure that's our top priority the adult mosquito samples are sent uh to identify by species for the sake of our maps but then we also have a vector ecologist on staff um who will take some samples if they're species that we know can carry diseases he can actually test them in our lab at st paul for the presence of west nile so we usually know by collecting mosquitoes and testing them before any human cases are found we usually know if there's west nile activity in a certain area so we can say you know this trap in shoreview collected a mosquito that tested positive so we can make sure that we're responding appropriately here's what our maps look like these are the maps that are published i don't know if you can see that well but these are also on our website we put out a map every week to kind of give a snapshot of what the mosquito situation is currently so you can see that's the entire seven county metro area all the dots and squares and stuff like that represent a count i compared 2020 versus 2021 2020 was a pretty typical year in terms of precipitation you can see there's a lot of red squares meaning they had more than a thousand mosquitoes in those traps all the red basically means they had more than 300 mosquitoes at a certain trap which is pretty common for mid july 2020 was extremely unusual years there's there's one red square kind of in the middle of hennepin county but everywhere else has a lot of you know blue dots with under 100 mosquitoes which is a very rare for you know july 12th when that was collected it was just because they're so rain dependent we just didn't get a lot of rain last year so it allowed us to focus on other things while we're doing our day-to-day work so these are prepared by our entomology lab uh our entomologists dr scott larson is kind of the one that distributes these and he's the one that really is kind of the mastermind behind these so once we figure out what's out there we got to figure out how to control them once we determine control is necessary we go to uh some decisions about what type of control is going to be used the three primary methods that we use are larval control adult mosquito control and habitat reduction or reducing breeding sites and a lot of the last one habitat reduction just comes down to education just telling people remove the standing water from your yard probably the biggest thing that i'm saying when people ask me you know what's the one thing i can do for mosquitoes it's just get rid of the standing water or if you have standing water you can't get rid of make sure you're treating it or disrupting it in some way we consider ourselves a larval control agency though when it turns to control materials we do vastly more larval control than we do adult control on the bottom right is a map or a grid from our technical advisory board report from just this past year so you can kind of see 2016 was an extremely unusual year it was a very very wet year we were way higher precipitation we went way over our typical material allotment so that wasn't a typical year but you can see the years following that when it kind of got back to normal 2020 and 2021 we only did a few thousand acres of adult control or we did almost 200 000 acres of larval control so we do a lot more larval control than we do adult control there's a couple reasons for that one it's a lot easier to control mosquito larvae because they're all in one place they're in a pond or they're in a you know a swamp where they're all there together and we can figure out exactly how many there are and get a rough estimate for how much materials we need versus the adult mosquitoes which can be you know flying around in woodlands and in people's yards and kind of everywhere the other thing is the larval control materials that we have are by far the safest options on the market they're specifically designed to not target anything except for mosquito larva so fish can eat them and everything else can eat them and it's not going to have a harmful impact the main material we use and i'll talk about those in the next slide is specifically targeted for mosquito larvae black fly larva and fungus gnats so those the only material the only species that are impacted by it and then also we have a geographical advantage because we have such a large service area we get a lot of calls from other cities and stuff like that that says you're so effective with larval control what can we do to mimic that and if you're just one city kind of by yourself you're not going to have as much effect with larval control because the adult mosquitoes from the neighboring cities are going to fly in mosquitoes they don't know city borders they'll just go wherever the the people are um and so but because we have such a wide geography we can really target our larval control and then have a widespread impact um with the least amount of effort so that's the main reason why we focus so heavily on larval control but we do do some adult control i'll talk about that too as we get there but the first thing source reduction it's the easiest thing for people to do we do alley inspections or neighborhood inspections to kind of check to see if there's a lot of standing water in an area sometimes we have to do property notices if people have a lot of debris that's clearly collecting water and then we also do public education campaigns in the bottom left there's some waste tires and i think i'm going to plug this on a later slide too but i'll mention it now we do free tire collections at mmcd so anybody who's in the county service area will come and collect your waste tires for residents at no charge so just give us a call let us know how many tires you have they have to be off the rims and they have to be typically car truck sized but we'll come and do that it's a good way to reduce mosquito habitat in the community larval control so our larval control material looks like that in the palm of that guy's hand in the top top right there it's a dry material a dry granules that are applied directly to standing water we apply it through helicopter backpack which is the picture there on the bottom or a hand spreader where people just toss it out for really small sites um but larval control mosquito materials are specific to mosquito larvae they're not toxic to any other species the primary active ingredients that we use are bti is the biggest one it's been around since the 70s and there's been no documented incidence of resistance so even though it's been used for so often it still is very effective and it's the best to use for the flood water mosquitoes that come out right after rain we also use methoprene and spinocid which are considered insect growth inhibitors these are kind of cool because the way that they work is they basically just stop a mosquito's development when they're in the larval stage doesn't kill them right away it just stops them so they never become adult mosquitoes so they can still be eaten by predators or anything like that basically they'll just die as larva and they'll never become adult mosquitoes so it's another kind of product that we use in some capacity as well so a lot of times people see our helicopters out and they're like what are what are those helicopters doing they're dropping pellets into the water so if you see it fly over a house or something like that you don't have to worry there's nothing that's you can get in contact with they swoop down over the ponds and we contract with the helicopter company that's very well trained and they know what they're doing and they they do a good job of getting it right where it needs to go adult control is primarily used to control disease mosquitoes so like i said we usually know when west nile activity is happening before any human cases are found and so usually we'll respond to west nile positive mosquitoes with some adult control to make sure that citizens in a certain area are being kept safe from the risks of mosquito-borne disease the mosquito or adult control material we use are synthetic pyrethroids permethrin psumethrin or resmethrin or some of the ones they're applied to barrier vegetation by a backpack a lot of people when they think of mosquito control they have a vision of like the 60s when the trucks would drive down and just kind of have the fogs behind them that's called cold fogging that's really not done anymore we do it occasionally from an atv in an area but it's not really what what it used to be usually now it's applied directly to vegetation from a backpack and the reason that is because we can train our staff then what to spray and what not to spray to make sure that they're avoiding any pollinator plants uh flowering weeds anything like that that could potentially pose a risk to non-target species what they do is they spray the barrier of a wooded area because mosquitoes during the day when it's hot and sunny out they go into the shaded area and then in the evening they come out and they land right on the edge of a wooded area that's when they use their sensors to detect where people are so that's when they'll get in contact with our materials and that's when they're most effective so we use a very small amount and i always put this on there we've never done aerial applications of adulticides or of adult control materials other states do and other places do but we've never done that here in minnesota and we have no intentions to do that but a lot of times we get that question you know i see your helicopters i see you know all i see stuff with your signs on it what are you spraying and it's like i always want to reiterate people we're not spraying anything we're dropping dry things if you saw if you got in contact with our material you'd see it you'd be able to pick it up that's the only thing that we apply from helicopters we do a lot of public education uh informing the public about how they can protect themselves against mosquitoes but also all aspects of mosquito control we do a ton of a lot of events uh career fairs stuff like that i was just in elementary school today talking to students trying to get the word out there to people about what's what's in their community that need to be aware of pollinator protection is part of our educational outreach so we connect with different organizations that have that as a chief concern and our outreach includes community events we do a lot of social media we do presentations at school and then here i am doing public speaking all right so environmental precautions uh we we're very concerned about the environment just like everybody else we want to make sure that anything that we're doing is not having a harmful impact so we take a lot of steps to ensure environmental safety first of all all of our staff are certified by the mda the minnesota department of agriculture and their licenses are renewed every two years we do annual training and reminders on pollinator safety how to identify habitat make sure that we're following material labels we do outreach and collaboration with groups like the minnesota hobby beekeepers association great group to work with and they really understand you know they're they're insect people too so they really know kind of the intricacies of what that goes uh what that entails uh and then we use the lowest effective treatment dosage of the least toxic effective control materials available for both larval and adult control obviously make our decisions based on research data and expert guidance that's what our tab members are for giving us kind of that expert guidance so in the next couple slides i kind of prepared some explanations of what we did in terms of environmental precautions what's cool about our agency is because we've been around for so long we have a lot of data and a lot of that data can be used for scientific studies and sometimes we've gotten grants and stuff like that to do our own studies to kind of check to see what um what impacts that we're having on our communities to make sure that we're being as safe as possible so first of all driftwatch is an organization at the minnesota department of agriculture so that we can map out where hives are where organic farms are and stuff like that make sure that there's no b lethal pesticides being used in those areas we just receive alerts whenever new sites are added and integrate them into our mapping software we have a really cool mapping system of our own that we developed over the years where when our field people are out and they need to look check on a site they can pull it up and immediately see you know there's hives a certain amount away from that or anything like that most of the materials i said that we use have no impact on beehives they're not pollinator they're harmful to pollinators so but if we ever have to do adult control in a certain area then we know what's around the rusty patched bumblebee we did a study um reviewing the risks of arc materials with the rusty patch bumblebee because the rusty patch bumblebee was placed on the endangered species list by the u.s fish and wildlife service so in 2018 we partnered with the fish and wildlife service to get advice and evaluate potential impact of mosquito control operations on the rusty patched bumblebee and so they we overlaid basically all of our adult mosquito control treatments with known habitat for the rusty patch bumblebee to kind of take a look at where our treatments likely to happen versus where their habitat is um and we're we're glad to hear their conclusion was that the risk of our treatments uh to the rusty patch bumblebee is low there wasn't a lot of overlap between their habitat and and their potential habitat and where we go the full study can be found on our website mmcd.org publications monarchs um there's a lot of concern from people about monarchs people love butterflies we love butterflies um and so we did a similar study as the the rusty patch bumblebee where we monitored what what risk is there for drift for pyrethroid treatments on the milkweed habitat and so we did a spatial overlap looking at where treatments are done or where they could potentially be done and how far we have to be from milkweed specifically to make sure that there's no drift that gets on the milkweed um it really just helps us helped us know we can track where milkweed is where there's pollinator habitat and make sure that we're giving a certain amount of swath with to make sure that we're not having any risk this is just to minimize the the chance that we're going to harm any pollinators as much as possible i mean most of the materials that we use we know don't pose a risk to pollinators but we want to make sure if we have to do adult control for the sake of public health we want to make sure that we're still being as safe as possible so we conducted this study again the full outline of the study can be found on our website and then this is our biggest study which i think is this is a really fascinating one so basically what we did is we wanted to see what impact our larval control materials were having in a minnesota climate in a minnesota environment um on species that aren't mosquitoes so what we did is we went to wright county which is a serve a county that we don't do any services in and they did they found 10 mosquito habitats that they didn't treat and 10 that they did treat and we basically worked at the university of minnesota and had students and and professors and stuff like that kind of do a count of what the species were in that area and then reserve it over a this is an eight-year study but actually was added two more years after that the full study is a 10-year study over 10 years what was the impact on the site that was treated versus the site that wasn't treated and this is primarily with larval control materials on birds frogs non-target insect species the full study it's very detailed it can be found on our website but we're very glad to find that larval control materials made no impact on bird populations no impact on frog populations the only thing that really impacted was mosquitoes um and so we felt confident that what we're doing is safe to be putting out in the environment and having the because we get a lot of questions about like you know if you're if you're eliminating mosquitoes or reducing mosquitoes is that going to affect the food chain and so that's really what we're trying to see there's no species whose primary food source is mosquitoes there are species that feed on mosquitoes but we wanted to see you know if there would be an impact and so that was what this study was all about all right check them out it looks like i'm good on time so got a couple slides left but uh this is a really good resource for people we put a lot of information on our website but one thing that residents can do is check to see what sites we're monitoring around your neighborhood we do we have a map site where you can enter in your address and then it might be a little hard to see on here but all the little areas that are outlined in orange are sites that we're monitoring so you can see there's a there's a big lake there we're not really monitoring the lake because that's not going to grow mosquitoes it's these little tiny you know indentations where water sits for a couple days at a time or weeks at a time or small ponds and swamps and stuff like that but you can click on those a little box will pop up at the bottom it'll say what type of site it is what the risk is and then you can click on site info and it'll tell you every time that we've been there in the past i think it goes back about 14 years it'll say when we've been there what we found if any treatment was done what was used it'll tell you if any mosquitoes that are could potentially carry west nile virus were found there um it's just a really cool resource a lot of times people will say you know i've got a pond near me i'm not sure i think it's growing a lot of mosquitoes can you come check it and i'll direct them here and say well see if we've been there and chances are we've been there within the past couple months a lot of times people think that they have an idea of where mosquitoes are coming from but it's not necessarily that site so it's just good for people to kind of click around and see you know and it's you'll be surprised how many places right around your house we're monitoring so we're we're pretty busy people uh in the community can sign up for email alerts so if you want to know more about when will potentially be in your neighborhood we have a system to alert whenever this is specifically for adult control um we also post on our website whenever we're doing helicopter treatments um so it's just right at the bottom our website there's a button that says subscribe for alerts you can also get alerts if you want to find out about when we're post job applications or when you just want to have general receive our general newsletter um and if anybody's looking for summer work we're still hiring for some summer seasonal opportunities but that's all on our website you can sign up for alerts and get notified about when we're doing adult mosquito control activities we do a lot of outreach so public education is a really important part of our ipm program we think we consider all of our staff to be part of the education program so we have make sure that they have business cards and stuff and are able to answer questions and we also do a lot of outreach to groups so i always try to put a plug in if you know a group that you think we should connect with or we should speak to let us know or if you have a public event that we should attend to help get the word out in the community let us know and and we'd love to be connected with that all right so the tips my ultimate tips on how to protect yourself from mosquitoes uh so there's two kind of sections here to protect yourself as an individual and then how to protect your yard we put together a great resource on our website uh called the residence guide so if you go to mmcd.org and click residence guide uh there's a lot of tips there's i think there's like 25 tips between personal protection and how to protect yourself but just kind of want to hit on the big ones to protect yourself the easiest way to avoid mosquitoes is to make sure that you're doing personal protective measures wearing bug spray insect or epa registered insect repellent is the best we recommend something with deet there's other natural repellents that have been approved by the epa that are good picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus are both recommended as well but we always just say whatever works for you great just make sure that you use it uh and the the thing that was really trying to drive home to people last year was last year we didn't have a lot of annoyance mosquitoes but we did have west nile virus activity even in a low mosquito year and so even if you're not feeling yourself getting bit a lot it's still a good idea if you're going to be out around peak mosquito hours in the evening hours put some repellent on just to be extra safe they're more attracted to dark colors so long sleeves loose fitting light colored clothing is gonna offer more protection this is one tip that i give to people always say like what's your one mosquito tip that people don't know about as much this is a really good tip for people use a permethrin based repellent for your clothes and gear so you can buy these at the store it'll say like closing gear spray and the active ingredient is permethrin spray your pants and your shoes and your socks and then spray your gear as well because not only will that repel mosquitoes but it also will repel ticks so when you're out hiking or camping or something like that it's gonna be really effective and it can it can make it through like two or three washes as well and your clothes will still repel them so it works really well um since i started doing that when i go camping i haven't found any ticks on me um which has been nice um and then avoid outdoors during their peak feeding time they're most active right around sunset so if you can go inside during that time and come back out later when they've had their fill or just stay in in those times of day it's going to be best for you or just put up some sort of barrier go into a screened in area or something like that during those times ways to protect your home remove containers clear gutters i've mentioned this and it's the biggest thing that i try to drive home for to people is just get rid of the standing water that's one of the best ways that you can control mosquitoes we've gotten calls from people saying you know mosquitoes are horrible in my neighborhood and there's no ponds or anything around me i don't know what's going on it's probably because there's somebody who's got a bunch of uh materials in their yard that hold water and that's where the mosquitoes are coming from so get rid of the standing water and it makes a big difference waste tires we'll remove those for free keep grass and shrubs short they like to kind of hide away from the sun during the day so that'll help ensure that there's no holes and screens there's another one of my favorite tips that i find really effective if you have an outdoor seating area set up a fan um in the area especially on those hot summer nights when it's really hot out anyway because that does one mosquitoes are weak flyers so it can kind of push them away but also it'll disperse your scent because the thing they're most attracted to you is your scent and your body heat so it kind of tampers down on your sense that you're giving off so that can really help um if you're considering hiring a professional to help with mosquito control we highly recommend that you call a certified pesticide applicator from the minnesota department of agriculture if you go to our website we link right to the minnesota department of agriculture's list where you can type in your county and it'll say who's certified in your area it's kind of hard to get there if you go through the mda website so if you go to our website we link you right to where you can find it but if you do have a really bad problem with mosquitoes you're like i need to call somebody call somebody who's a certified pesticide applicator because they're trained to make sure that they're avoiding you know pollinator habitat and make sure that they're using the least toxic materials in the safest way possible so that's another recommendation all right i'm a little bit done early but i haven't seen anything come through in the chat but if people are tuning into this after the fact this is my contact information my email address and my phone number that's my direct line you can also call our front desk as well information all on our website all right yeah so for folks at home please type a question in the chat box and while you're doing that you've actually planted maria with some questions so we're answering hi alex so i've got lots of questions because i'm just curious as well but so you've mentioned a couple times now what mosquitoes are attracted to including our sense dark clothing uh carbon dioxide is there anything i guess really specific that like really does attract them to us like what about or is it just pheromones is it something i guess i'm just really curious because we always kind of hear the myth oh it's a certain blood type is that just a myth or is it actually something to do with so that's a good there there was a study that found that they are attracted to o positive blood types slightly more but that's like that's not going to be the main thing the main thing they're attracted to is scents so a sense in body heat so if somebody runs a little warmer if you ever know anybody who's pregnant pregnant women are mosquito magnets because they tend to run a little bit warmer um if you're using artificial scents like hairsprays and perfumes that can give a lot of smells off they'll be more attracted to that and then some people are just genetically unlucky and i know that's like i've got two kids and one of them seems to get a thousand mosquito bites the other one will get one and you can guess which one complains more um but it's just it's just kind of unluckiness uh but yeah it's it's mainly sense and temperature that they're attracted to i'm definitely one of those unlucky people i was really just curious can you hear that but i never knew that was actually true um so another question you mentioned towards the beginning during the steel life cycle that male adult mosquitoes will feed on nectar and flowers with are they considered pollinators or do do they do any cross-pollination they are well both female mosquitoes and male mosquitoes feed on flower nectar so they are considered pollinators but not significant pollinators so they're not like gonna do a lot of the work that the main pollinators would think of the bees and butterflies and stuff like that doing they do a very minute amount compared to them um and you mentioned a few research projects that you guys have done is there any plan to continue those projects or have you kind of gotten a sense of you know we're really not uh our treatments aren't aren't uh aren't impacting anything that we're researching so kind of closing that off i guess are there any current projects that you guys are still researching that you can kind of share yeah absolutely we're doing research projects all the time and they're mainly driven by our tab board our technical advisory board basically every year they end our meeting with the recommendations and usually one of those recommendations is we want you to learn more about this so most recently it was jamestown canyon virus which is kind of a new disease that's cropping up really in our area and so we did a massive study last year and we're continuing into this year about figuring out where spring 80s species are popping up which carried jamestown canyon and to figure out what habitats are most likely to is it spring 80s are found all over but we're only finding jamestown canyon in certain areas so why is it over there so we're our lab is doing a study right there uh right with that and then we're also rusty patch bumblebee continues to be something that is brought up so we're continuing to work with the fish and wildlife service to make sure that we're being as safe as possible with them and that's another study that we're contributing to i did see a question come up from the chat it says when did the larvicide treatments begin soon i suspect uh they will begin soon we said we have started some of our briquettes treatments which is for the cattail mosquitoes because those we actually find where they are in the fall when they hatch so we know going into the spring where they are and so we kind of determine the best way to treat so we've put some briquettes down in the winter and early spring to find out where those are going to be our helicopter treatments are going to begin probably the first week in may it's been a cold spring so everything's kind of a little bit delayed we have kind of a temperature chart that we look at uh and so we will probably begin our helicopter treatments around the beginning of may is likely when that will begin question and this is more these past this past year and these past couple years with the pandemic we've kind of seen a lot of new invasive species in a lot of different areas including like jumping worms or like there was the you know murder hornets kind of stuff is there you mentioned that there are 52 species of mosquitoes found here in minnesota is there a possibility of finding invasive species and really is it more so that they just can't survive here or you guys monitoring for that yeah absolutely it's always a risk there's actually one species that we're most concerned about it's 80s albopictus and it's a concern for us because it can carry it could potentially carry zika and dengue fever it's not typically found here but we do find a couple every year because they come up during the summer month from like a tire tree uh transportation or something like that um but they can't survive our winters so our climate does protect us but with climate with sometimes we have warmer winters we're likely to see more mosquitoes surviving in this far north climate that we don't typically see so we're definitely concerned about the potential for more species coming in and establishing here that aren't native thank you another question um you went through some of the examples of diseases and you know who are the hosts and the vector species um and you mentioned for example west nile virus that if a mosquito bites a bird that's carrying it it can then you know if it then bites us we can transfer it is there any way to test birds or horses or these creatures that are holster or vectors for for these feet for these diseases is there any way to test for that or is it just kind of luck yeah no actually we did used to test birds um dead birds so it used to be people call us when they had dead birds and we would come collect them and then test them we don't do that anymore we work with the department of health and now we just focus on testing the mosquito pools that we collect people we still encourage people to call us if they're finding dead birds especially if there's no clear evidence of trauma like hitting a window or a car or something like that because it's very likely it's some sort of disease possibly mosquito-borne disease and so we still like to know where those are happening especially it's usually august early early august is when we start hearing those um and that's usually when we know it's west nile virus but we don't test those anymore um if the department of health recommends that we start doing that again we could um but i think we got uh too many people got grossed out by all the dead birds we had sitting around in st paul that we had to stop doing that yeah i imagine that might not be the easiest thing to talk about or to explain to people but i mean it's for a good cause i think um it makes sense um i had kind of just a fun little question is there a mosquito effect that you really enjoy sharing or some something cool that that you find about them um well when i ask this question to our lab they always talk about like some of their favorite mosquitoes to catch are the ones that don't bite humans um just because there's some really interesting mosquito species that we find and there's there's one species that they always collect a couple of they're not really attracted to our traps but they always end up with a couple each summer um and they're like this iridescent blue species when you're looking out of the microscope they're like they got like these glowing blue wings and they're really like and kind of impressive to look at you don't really think of mosquitoes as being beautiful but they're really kind of cool um and so that's just kind of a fun thing just knowing that there's so many species out there that aren't the ones that are typically around people um it's just kind of a cool fact that's really cool there's so far for the mosquitoes that don't fight humans are they i would assume they're not attracted to humans either like for the sense yeah yeah they're not attracted to necessarily to our co2 or to our breathing and scents and stuff like that yeah they're more attracted to to what birds are doing the smells that birds have or that particular species actually bites frogs and slugs which is yeah kind of unique so they're found around water yeah and so a few years back this isn't as much to do with minnesota but i remember all the talk about zika and then they're seeming like i haven't heard about it since yeah what is was that just a really unusual spike here or what happened yeah it was uh it was an unusual spike here and there haven't been any cases that were contracted in the u.s since 2016. um there's a couple cases where people get from traveling internationally um but i think part of it was the species that carries it was really easy to identify so a lot of you know departments of health in certain states really did a good job of mitigating the risk and then also it's just we see a lot of you know ups and downs with mosquito-borne diseases especially when they're vector-based um so like in minnesota we'll see a drop in west nile because the birds become immune to it they develop an immunity over a certain amount of time so they're not caring it is as much so mosquitoes aren't getting as much so part of it is that so it could be that you know zeke could come back at some point but that doesn't seem that it doesn't seem that likely it's kind of hard to predict and is it edward then in other countries yeah yeah kind of really like i think they said two-thirds of the world population lives at daily risk of a mosquito-borne disease um and some parts of especially tropical climates they're a daily risk of serious mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and dengue fever so that's why there's a lot of good work being done by ngos and stuff like that to distribute bed nets and to do kind of mosquito mitigation measures in areas that are really at risk of some of the more dangerous diseases that we don't necessarily see in minnesota because we have a climate that doesn't allow them to flourish here yeah we get the question too every year like when we have those really cold winters or really cold days like is this going to kill off the mosquito eggs that are down there like well we've had cold winters for a long time in minnesota and they still keep coming back so not quite that kind of was a minor question um so with this drought that we had last year are you guys expecting like a huge influx i guess it really depends on the weather but yeah expectations yeah that's the other question we get the most what's our mosquito forecast and ultimately predicting mosquitoes is predicting the weather so like it really depends on the rain but a couple things that we can look at we actually have a pretty good model that can predict cattail mosquito emergence because because they lay their eggs in the fall and then over winter as larva we can kind of figure out where they are and then also look at the the forecast for the the estimated rain amounts and what we had for rain at the end of last year and so we're predicting actually fewer cattle mosquitoes this year than we even had last year um so we're probably usually if you look at kind of the chart throughout the summer usually around the 4th of july you see the big spike because that's when all the cattail mosquitoes come out so we're probably not going to see that spike this year the other thing we look at is the long-term climate forecast on precipitation and right now they are predicting that we're going to be slightly below average for precipitation so if that holds true then we'll see fewer mosquitoes uh but predictions can be wrong when it comes to rain and stuff like that we've already had a pretty wet spring so um it could be that we see a lot more precipitation this year and then mosquitoes are back but it's really hard to say as far as that goes i do have sorry another question you do you went over at the end tips to protect yourself and protect your home you talked about some natural um you know uh d uh d d turns i mean at least i know growing up we always had like mosquito zappers and things that we retain from trees are those beneficial or helpful at all or is i mean the main thing is getting rid of staining water but is it fine to have those out or is it is that not are those i think you really have to kind of do your own research and figure out because there's a lot of mosquito traps well actually they emit co2 and so they'll attract more mosquitoes than they'll catch and so you're really kind of causing more harm than good by putting those out so a lot of those advertisers mosquito traps aren't very effective the bug zappers they're not as attracted to light as other insects are so if you put those out you'll see it's getting a lot of moths and stuff like that let's not get as many mosquitoes they're more driven by scent than they are by bright lights and stuff like that so there are some products that have been found to be pretty effective especially um i've heard um anecdotally we haven't done any tests on this itself but they have some that you like you can put under a table if you're out and that gives puffs basically puffs of like a similar product to permethrin that kind of like will keep away any mosquitoes from in a certain area um so you can set those out um the citronella candles are somewhat effective you have to have them pretty close to you though um a lot of people like a lot of people will put them like on the edges of their yard mosquitoes can fly high so they'll go right up and over them so yeah i'm kind of having right by you and then we've also seen mixed results with like a lot of people believe that there's certain plants you can put out but they've done studies on like the um like mint and different things you can grow and really they repel mosquitoes up to like three inches so they're not going to have a huge impact but there's a lot of stuff out there that some people swear by so i encourage people to do kind of your own research and see what's out there and uh read what entomologists say because they're kind of the best and final word thank you i mean that's kind of all the questions i can think of um okay so i was just reading a story uh news about genetic modification yes and modifying male mosquitoes so that the offspring that were female would die yes is that something that's on your radar that's not an r rate because they're only doing it with the 80s aegypti which is a species that is found in florida and parts of california and arizona so it's not a species that we have here um and it's a really interesting study and they just did it like 2019 or 2020 was the first time they started releasing them but yeah the idea is the sterile males will will out-compete the other mosquitoes in the area and then the females won't be able to reproduce and it will reduce the numbers so i think the data is still not official yet on what impact it's having but it's something we're definitely watching because it could be a cool future for mosquito control to eliminate just a certain species that we don't want um but it's not something we're considering here anytime soon well i don't see any more questions in the chat so i guess we'll kind of wrap up and i want to remind folks that uh next month may 18th our presentation will be on selecting lawn equipment to improve air quality so we're going to be looking a lot at electronic or battery-powered lawn equipment so join us for that that'll again just be virtual so the link is on the website to that seven o'clock may 18th and folks at home if you want to give that little clap emoji gift whatever uh and otherwise everyone let's thank alex for the presentation appreciate it feel free to reach out to me if you have further questions thank you do i hit stop share you