Mosquitofish: A lesser-known ally in the battle against Utah's bitey bugs


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SALT LAKE CITY — They are a little-known ally in the battle against the blood-sucking insects, but mosquito abatement workers maintain “mosquitofish” are a highly-effective way to control Utah's mosquito populations.

The Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District monitors roughly 700 privately owned ornamental ponds, pools and other bodies of stagnant water, and workers deploy the fish in many of those areas to reduce mosquito populations, according to urban supervisor Brad Sorensen.

“They’ll go after their larvae and their pupil stages, which are the mosquitoes’ aquatic stages of their life cycle,” Sorensen explained. “You can just see that they’re really aggressive at eating whatever comes onto the top of the surface. They’re basically fighting each other for it.”

Sorensen said he believed the mosquitofish can reduce mosquito populations around stagnant water by as much as 80 percent.

“That’s what we like about them is that they will eat what they come across,” he said.

According to Sorensen, mosquitofish – or Gambusia affinis – have been used as a control measure for decades, but only became a significant part of the abatement district’s program within the past 15 years, coinciding with the rise of West Nile Virus.

Now, the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District raises the fish indoors year-round as part of its biological control program.

“During the winter, we’ll pull hundreds of (their fry) out of there at a time and transfer them over,” Sorensen explained, standing in front of a large fish tank. “They’ll actually eat their own fry because they are mistaking it for something else.”

Sorensen said each pond gets 2-3 treatments of mature mosquitofish during the summer.

“It’s like having your kids grow up and then be like, ‘Here you go, go ahead to college,’” Sorensen quipped. “The types of species of mosquito that are actually in (ornamental ponds) are really thriving in kind of like, really stagnant, kind of nasty water. These fish actually do a really good job in that same type of water at the same time.”

Sorensen said homeowners who receive the treatments on their properties have generally worked with the abatement district for years, but others are often surprised to know fish play an integral role in controlling mosquito populations.

“Everybody thinks of mosquito control and thinks of the mosquito fogging truck, but we’ve gone to all these different methods to try and control mosquitoes before they actually get into those adult stages, because it’s a lot easier to control them in their larval stages,” Sorensen said. “It’s just kind of a surprise for a lot of people. It does kind of make it a unique experience for us.”

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