Mosquito resistance issues

Greg Pettis

Sometimes we forget about mosquito resistance issues until we have bounce-back from populations that kind of seem to come out of nowhere. But it shouldn’t surprise us if we have been using the same product — or believe it or not, category of pesticide — month after month, or worse, year after year. Insect resistance can happen when an adult mosquito obtains a sub-lethal dose of an insecticide and its body’s defenses build an immunity that gets passed down to future generations.

Breaking this cycle may require switching to an all-natural pesticide. Some objections to an all-natural product line may include cost. In response, I always ask, “What is the cost of multiple callbacks or a cancellation of services due to repopulations?”

Another objection can be the assumption that all-natural products have inferior efficacy. This was a common misconception until 2019, when the Journal of the Florida Mosquito Control Association proved that an all-natural product outperformed other products in the lab and field in a two-year study.

(Editor’s Note: See Journals.flvc.org/jfmca/issue/view/5898, p. 50; an abbreviated version of the study is available at Bit.ly/3U82tJn, with permission of the Florida Mosquito Control Association.)