Meeting 1223 Minutes

Minutes from the 1223rd Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

The 1223rd meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Jessie Thuma at 7:35pm on Tuesday February 14, 2023. Approx. 18 members and guests attended.

New business:

Isaac Weinberg, Kevin Headrick and Robert Hart were nominated for membership

Nominations for 2023-2024 Club officers are now being accepted.

The Club is seeking a member to bring refreshments for meetings. They will be reimbursed for related expenses.

Old business:

Shinichi Nakahara and Bailey Willet were approved for membership.

Our speaker was Lauren Culler, Research Asst. Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College.

Her talk was entitled “Ecology of mosquitoes and other arthropods in the rapidly changing Arctic”.

Mosquitoes and other biting insects can dominate the human experience in the Arctic. Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall described them as “a thousand devils, each armed with lancet and blood-pump.”

Professor Culler’s field work in Greenland studies the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and its effects on the Arctic ecosystem. Only one species of mosquito is found in Prof. Culler’s field site in Greenland, Aedes nigripes, which has a one year life cycle. With warming temperatures, development time for mosquitoes has decreased about 19% on average. This means decreased predation for the mosquitoes during their larval stage and can increase stresses on animals the mosquitoes feed on. For instance, caribou calving season now coincides with the timing of earlier emerging mosquitoes. In turn, more mosquitoes and more mosquito larvae mean more food for birds, fish and other animals. There is no evidence so far that A. nigripes carries pathogens. Two observed effects of climate change, less precipitation, and a warmer, drier environment, lead to fewer, shorter-lived ponds for mosquitoes to breed in. In addition, permafrost is ordinarily impermeable to surface water, but when it melts in warmer temperatures, it becomes a permeable substrate that can drain ponds that would be potential mosquito breeding habitat.

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 8:52.

Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary