{"id":215296,"date":"2025-10-21T11:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T11:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/215296\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T11:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T11:02:10","slug":"mosquitoes-found-in-iceland-iceland-monitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/215296\/","title":{"rendered":"Mosquitoes found in Iceland &#8211; Iceland Monitor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>      <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1604874.jpg\" id=\"a1604874\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"The female insect that Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason found on October 18.\" rel=\"newsimgs\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1604874.jpg\" alt=\"The female insect that Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason found on October 18.\" style=\"max-width:100%;text-align:center\" class=\"img-fluid\" width=\"730\" height=\"476\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n        The female insect that Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason found on October 18.<br \/>\n          Photo\/Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason\n      <\/p>\n<p>\n Three mosquitoes of the species Culiseta annulata were found in Iceland last week, after Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason of Ki\u00f0afell in Kj\u00f3s noticed them in his garden.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n He first reported the finding on the Facebook page<\/p>\n<p>  Skord\u00fdr \u00e1 \u00cdslandi<\/p>\n<p> (\u201cInsects in Iceland\u201d) after spotting an unusual-looking insect on October 16.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n In an interview with mbl.is, Hjaltason says he immediately suspected what it might be. \u201cI could tell right away that this was something I had never seen before.\u201d Bj\u00f6rn caught the insect, which turned out to be a female.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n The next day, the same thing happened again \u2014 this time it was a male, recognizable by its feathery antennae and larger mouthparts compared to the female.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n Hjaltason had another visitor for the third night in a row, on October 18, and again managed to catch the insect \u2014 another female.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n When asked about the experience, he says it was quite exciting. \u201cYes, it\u2019s always fun to discover something new,\u201d says Hjaltason, who sent the three insects for identification to Matth\u00edas Alfre\u00f0sson, entomologist at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, who confirmed that they were mosquitoes of the species Culiseta annulata.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n In his Facebook post, Hjaltason wrote that \u201cthe last fortress has fallen,\u201d as Iceland has until now not been considered one of the countries where mosquitoes are native. Speaking to mbl.is, he admits that might be a bit of an overstatement \u2014 it still remains to be seen whether the insects will establish themselves here and survive the winter.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n As for where they came from, Hjaltason speculates: \u201cOne always suspects Grundartangi \u2014 it\u2019s only about six kilometers from me, and things often arrive with ships and containers, so it\u2019s possible something came in that way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n \u201cBut if three of them came straight into my garden, there were probably more,\u201d Hjaltason adds, noting that this species should be quite capable of surviving Icelandic conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The female insect that Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason found on October 18. Photo\/Bj\u00f6rn Hjaltason Three mosquitoes of the species Culiseta&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,92588,92587,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-215296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-iceland-weather-forecast-and-information","tag-in-depth-iceland-news-coverage","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}