Yellow Fever Mosquito

Aedes aegypti is the principal urban vector of yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika virus, and chikungunya. Only female mosquitoes feed on blood — they need the protein for egg development; males feed exclusively on plant nectar. A. aegypti is uniquely adapted to human environments: it breeds in tiny pockets of standing water (a bottle cap is enough), preferentially feeds on humans, and is most active during the day rather than at dawn and dusk. The species is believed to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa and spread globally aboard slave ships during the colonial era. Today its range is expanding poleward as climate warming opens new habitats. Disease control is conducted through larviciding, source reduction, and increasingly through gene-drive and Wolbachia-infection releases that disrupt the mosquito's ability to transmit viruses. Mosquitoes overall — across all species — are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal in history, with malaria alone killing roughly 600,000 people per year as of 2024 (most carried by Anopheles, not Aedes).