Juel Duke
The idea for this insect article literally landed on my hand. I’ve lived near water most of my life but I was not prepared for the enormous mosquito that landed and stayed long enough for me to study it a bit. Not a mosquito hawk or crane fly, but a mosquito I was sure. His big fuzzy antennae told me it was a male so I was relieved that I didn’t need to worry about him using his enormous proboscis. The internet provided many images of “giant mosquito” but the descriptions weren’t right. One hit that I happened to read in a bit more detail mentioned the Elephant Mosquito and it fit the bill right down to being very metallic and colorful. In fact, the rainbow sparkle was the second most memorable feature, after the size. The body of my visitor was easily a half inch long.
Turns out that the elephant mosquito, Toxorhynchites rutilus, is one of the good guys and we should be excited to have it in our yards. The larval stage feeds on the larvae of other pest mosquitoes, a very good thing.
Adults, both males and females are active only during the day and they use that proboscis to reach nectar in the blooms of plants. I couldn’t find any information on numbers of these mosquitos but they appear to be wide spread though infrequently found over much of the southern United States. Therefore, it’s unlikely that they are important pollinators but they are welcome to a share of the nectar from my plants.
