Animals How the only insect survives in the cold of Antarctica
Only a few plants and animals survive in the icy expanses of Antarctica - and only one insect. Researchers have now found out exactly how the small mosquito manages to do this.
16.02.2025, 04:19
16.02.2025, 04:25
SDA
According to their findings, a complicated larval development cycle lasting two years is typical. As adults, the animals then only live for a few days, as the team reports in the journal "Scientific Reports".
The tiny mosquito Belgica antarctica cannot fly - but it can survive icy temperatures in which ice forms in its body. Even temporary dehydration does not bother it. And although it measures just a few millimetres, the black mosquito is the largest land animal living permanently on the continent, as researchers led by Shin Goto from Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan explain.
Life with a mandatory break
In the laboratory, they followed the life of such mosquitoes from the egg through four larval stages to the finished insect. The larvae, which feed on algae and moss, among other things, initially grow and enter a dormant phase in the first winter. Their development continues as soon as it gets warmer. According to the research team, a so-called obligatory diapause follows as the second winter approaches. This is a genetically anchored developmental interruption that occurs in all individuals of a population under all circumstances, regardless of the weather. A so-called facultative diapause, on the other hand, only occurs under certain environmental conditions.
Mandatory diapauses, in which the metabolism is greatly reduced, are often used by animals to survive unfavorable seasons such as cold winters or dry seasons. In Belgica antarctica, all animals pupate at the end of this phase and hatch almost simultaneously. The timing for the synchronous emergence of the adults has to be right, as Goto's team emphasizes, because the mosquitoes only have a few days until death to successfully mate.
