ISTANBUL

Even though mosquitoes typically prefer more tropical, humid conditions, their numbers have exploded throughout the US Las Vegas Valley in recent years because of a variety of changes.

“People aren’t wrong that mosquitoes shouldn’t really thrive in desert conditions, but it’s clear that the particular set of species that we do have in Clark County has adapted to the local ecology,” said Louisa Messenger, an assistant professor in the department of environmental and global health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, according to NBC.

The species that have taken hold in Clark County include Culex mosquitoes, which can carry West Nile virus, and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the primary spreaders of dengue.

Messenger and her colleagues at UNLV have found that mosquitoes in Las Vegas are becoming resistant to insecticides, a major public health risk in a city built on tourism.

“It is a little bit of a ticking time bomb,” Messenger said.

In particular, dengue has been surging in North and South America, with more than 13 million cases recorded across the continents in 2024, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In Vegas, we have more than 48 million visitors coming through our doors every year from all over the planet,” Messenger said. “It just takes a couple of mosquito bites to start local transmission.”

As a result of climate change and global warming, shifting weather patterns are expanding the geographic range in which mosquitoes live and breed, which can cause the spread of infectious diseases through them.