Pitcher plant mosquito
The pitcher plant mosquito grows up inside a plant that eats insects. The purple pitcher plant has leaves shaped like little jugs full of water, and that water is this mosquito's nursery. Most of these mosquitoes never bite people at all.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It is the only mosquito known where some groups must bite and other groups of the same kind never bite.
Its babies are the top hunters in the tiny world of water inside the pitcher leaf.
It spends the winter as a baby, resting inside the pitcher plant's leaves.
It can tell the season by how long the days are. With warmer weather, it now waits for shorter days before resting for winter.
Its eggs hatch after one to eight days, and the babies become grown-ups after about three weeks.
Most asked questions about Pitcher plant mosquito
?Does the pitcher plant mosquito bite?
Northern ones never bite. Southern ones may drink blood once, but they are not very keen.
?Why does it live in a pitcher plant?
The water inside the pitcher leaf is full of tiny food for its babies, and it lays its eggs nowhere else.
?Doesn't the pitcher plant eat it?
No. The plant catches other insects, but this mosquito lives safely in its water.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Wyeomyia smithii
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Culicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Culicidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Wyeomyia smithii (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Kyle Rossner. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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