Stowaway insects imperil Darwin's finches
By Andy Coghlan
THE famous Galapagos finches could be among the first casualties of mosquitoes that are stowing away on aircraft, potentially bringing fatal viruses to the islands.
Live mosquitoes captured in the holds of aircraft arriving on the Galapagos from mainland Ecuador were found to survive and breed on the islands (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0998). Although none of the captured mosquitoes carried lethal viruses such as the West Nile virus (WNV) – which decimated bird populations in the US after arriving in New York in 1999 – they have the potential to do so.
WNV has been reported in …