Video: Common birds in Washington, D.C. are helping Smithsonian scientists track intensity of the West Nile Virus

Posted on 07 October 2009

Featured

Since 1999, repeated epidemics of the West Nile Virus in North America have infected more than one million people and killed more than 800. Understanding the feeding behavior of the mosquitoes that carry this disease and their preferences is the first step to controlling the West Nile Virus. Scientists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, in conjunction with the Consortium of Conservation Medicine, are studying mosquitoes, and their avian victims, in urban and suburban areas in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Recently they discovered that in late spring and early summer, more than half of the birds bitten by mosquitoes were American robins, even though robins make up only four percent of the bird population. Once the robins finish nesting in late summer and disperse from their breeding areas, the mosquitoes turn to their second favorite blood source: humans.

Related posts:

  1. Smithsonian scientists give giant pandas a helping hand at reproduction
  2. Scientists Determine Geese Involved in Hudson River Plane Crash Were Migratory
  3. Laboratory tests reveal precise way to measure vertical lift in bumblebees and other small insects and birds

Tags | , ,

Leave a Reply

Recent Videos

Meet our Scientists—Videos!

Caught on camera!

This short video of an ocelot was taken by Smithsonian scientists during a recent camera-trap survey of these animals in the Peruvian Amazon. [...more]

(Courtesy of Joseph Kolowski)

Twitter

SmithsonianSci

twitter