Our Friend, The Elephant Mosquito

Being outside looking at plants often brings you up close to insects. The variety of what’s out there is amazing! Sometimes I only see a certain bug just once and I realize what an incredible opportunity it was that I was there at just the right time to see it. That is how I found the elephant mosquito.

Elephant mosquito

In late July I was photographing the bugs on my mountain mint (Pycnanthemum) when I spied a mosquito so large that that I wondered if it might not be some sort of fly. I uploaded a photo to my favorite bug identification website (BugGuide.net) and had an answer within hours: it was the elephant mosquito, Toxorhynchites rutilus. The shining blue ‘straws’ are her mouth parts.

The mosquito is not only harmless to humans – it feeds on flowers instead of blood – but its larvae are predators of the larvae of other mosquitoes, eating as many as 5000 of the others before it matures! Here is a fascinating article that I found about breeding efforts in Texas.

I’m glad to have it naturally but now I am faced with the dilemma of dumping out sources of water which might contain the good ones! Argh. 

A second discovery of this bug occurred while I was counting on Aug 24 for the Great Georgia Pollinator Census. This time the mosquito was nectaring on cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) in the backyard. The bees were a little pushy on that plant and eventually she left it for a more peaceful meal.

So if you see this large mosquito with the beautiful blue mouth parts, be excited and let it go happily on its way to helping you out. This one is our friend.

Elephant mosquito on Rudbeckia laciniata