There are dozens of types of mosquitoes in North Texas. Some are capable of carrying diseases like West Nile or Zika, others are harmless. We caught up with a mosquito hunter who works with the city of Denton to find out the differences between the bugs.

On the shelves that line a small museum on UNT’s campus, there are all sorts of oddities. A bird embryo, a mounted raccoon…even a fetal pig.

But Biology Professor James Kennedy wants to focus one of the world’s most dangerous animals – the mosquito.

Lauren Silverman/KERA News

UNT Biology Professor James Kennedy shows a display case with the more than fifty types of mosquitoes that live in North Texas.

Each year, mosquito bites result in the deaths of more than one million people across the world. Some mosquitoes carry malaria, West Nile, and, yes, Zika. Still, Kennedy doesn’t hate them.

“I have an inordinate fondness for mosquitoes,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I love mosquitoes, but I respect them. And I look at the role they played in world history, and that they continue to play in world history and I just find them fascinating from that standpoint.”

James Kennedy

Culex quinquefasciatus is the most common carrier of West Nile Virus in Denton, Texas over the last 12 years.

Let’s get one thing straight – not all mosquitoes are the same. There are more than fifty types in North Texas alone, each with their own color, shape and personality. Some are active at night, others during the day. Some are brown, others a golden-hue. Some prefer to feed on humans, others, on animals.

To better control the mosquitoes around us, Kennedy says we need to know what kinds live here.

To get a closer look at the mosquito speceies that’s most recently been in the news — Aedes Aegypti — we pull out the microscope in a nearby lab.

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A closeup of the Aedes aegypti, a common house mosquito that also is a carrier of the Zika virus.

Aedes Aegypti, the mosquito that carries the Zika virus, has a black and white body, with stripes on its legs.

“When this is alive it’s a striking mosquito,” Kennedy says. It almost looks like a zebra, with feathery antennae that serve as receptors to help it hone in on its prey.

Only female mosquitoes bite; Kennedy explains they need a “blood meal” so they can lay eggs. And those clusters of eggs need water to hatch. Kennedy says it pays off to do a little cleanup around your house to prevent adult mosquitoes from bothering you.

“You’re not just looking for a pool of water, or a bucket of water, you’re looking for those micro-habitats,” Kennedy says. “It might be a soft drink can (…) or your kids leave their toys out, you have your sprinkler system on and it just takes that fraction of an inch of water.”

So, why not just try and exterminate them all? Graduate student Beth Hambrick says it’s easy to hate on mosquitoes, but they’re important in the ecosystem.

“They bring so much biomass and so much energy to different bats and birds and all these different creatures that actually prey on mosquitoes,” she says.

Mosquitoes have been on earth for more than 200 million years. Some people thought we’d get rid of them with pesticides like DDT, but instead, certain species built up resistance — making it harder to kill them later on. The lesson, professor Kennedy says, is that we need to better understand the bugs to control them, and that starts with acknowledging there’s no quick fix.

Did you know West Virginia has the fewest species of mosquitoes? Or that mosquitoes spend their first ten days in water? If you want to know more, check out this list of facts about mosquitoes.