SOUTH BEND — It was by chance. Researcher Andrew Lima noticed a mosquito that seemed odd for Washington, D.C., where he lives. It turned out to be the same species that transmits the Zika virus that is now causing alarm for pregnant women in the tropics.
“They shouldn’t be there,” says Dave Severson, a University of Notre Dame biology professor who’s traveled the world to collect and study the culprit: the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
The nation’s capital is “considerably north” of habitat where this mosquito normally survives, says Severson, whom the D.C. researcher reached out to for help. A winter’s freeze would kill them. And yet, several hundred of the insects thrived in a small neighborhood within a block of the U.S. Supreme Court building.
“These mosquitoes could fly to the Capitol building,” Severson quipped.
No, the mosquitoes weren’t carrying the virus. But their discovery in D.C., Severson said, begs a question about their ability to adapt: “Where else are they?”
Zika’s immediate symptoms — such as a fever, rash and joint pain — are often so mild that they don’t cause any alarm, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But medical professionals are trying to confirm the link between the virus and thousands of newborns in Brazil and several other Latin American countries with microcephaly, a condition in which the child is born with an unusually small head and brain.
Researchers agree that there’s bound to be some kind of Zika outbreak in the United States eventually. But Alex Perkins, an assistant professor of biology at Notre Dame who studies statistics about controlling insect-borne diseases, said it won’t be on a large scale. It’s more likely to happen in the southern states — which is as far north as the species is typically found — and more likely in summer’s warmth.