Talk:Mosquitoes

Just a tip on something you might like to discuss: where can you get these repellants? Are they easily obtainable in affected countries? Sold at airports? Should you get them before you leave home? I ask because I'm about to go to Thailand and really, I have no idea. - (WT-en) Hypatia 05:50, 6 Oct 2004 (EDT)

DEET is pretty common in the US. The others I've seen for sale on websites. I make one with neem and catnip but my company's not set up yet. Andiroba grows in northern Brazil and Guyana and neem in India (both are in the mahogany family and work similarly). The research on catnip is recent, so you probably won't find many products with it yet. -(WT-en) phma 21:00, 6 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Moved page

Since prevention of mosquito bites is done in various ways, such as repellent, nets, not being outdoors at night and so on, I moved the page from mosquito repellent to mosquitoes. (WT-en) Hypatia 23:28, 4 Dec 2004 (EST)

Scientific content

I've made the edit to add a lot (?) of scientific information about mosquitoes to the article, which was subsequently cut [1]. I understand the need for wikivoyage *not* to be a scientific information source, but I specifically narrowed my additions of information to that relating to biting, and a few notes on the history. Especially the last paragraph, relating to blood types, may be useful to some people. I know I find it interesting (therefore I added it), but is it really considered too much? I'm willing to re-work it (I have read the style guidelines), but how to proceed? Do I add an "Overview" section? --(WT-en) Dewet 23:40, 27 Dec 2004 (EST)

Copyvio

Unless you are the sole author of the Wikipedia article, you cannot copy any of it here (see Project:Cooperating with Wikipedia#Sharing content). Someone needs to go through this article and remove the copied content. (I'm going to stay out of the conversation about what the content of this article should be like, so please go ahead and continue that conversation) -- (WT-en) Colin 00:24, 28 Dec 2004 (EST)

Ah. I did not realise there is a licensing clash; therefore the introductory / history information should be removed as it is a verbatim copy. The changes I made to the prevention section (including adding the drugs) is my own work, so I'll leave that in. Thanks for the clarification. ((WT-en) Dewet 00:57, 28 Dec 2004 (EST))

If the content came from Wikipedia we can simply link to it and save the hassle of rewriting it here. I will do that shall I... - (WT-en) Huttite 05:14, 4 Jan 2005 (EST)

Prophylaxis

I think the whole Mosquitoes#Prophylaxis should move to Malaria#Prophylaxis. I think the Mosquitoes article should be confined to the more general issue of mosquitoes and preventing bites etc. as mosquitoes spread other diseases as well. Perhaps a table of countries where mosquitoes are and the diseases they carry and a brief comment about vaccinations etc for each with references to the individual tropical diseases. -- (WT-en) Huttite 05:25, 4 Jan 2005 (EST)

I can see your reasoning; maybe that is a good idea. I feel that the whole mosquito/malaria/etc topic(s) should be kept together (that's why I had all the scientific info in there as well), seeing as the whole "printable guide" idea would probably tackle this as a single "mosquitoes" entry. Dunno if I'm making any sense, however ;) As to the prevalence of mosquitoes, they are pretty much everywhere except antarctica, so I doubt a table would be that helpful. If you just look at the malaria distribution, it stretches in a belt around the world, coming as low down as sub-tropical regions on either side of the equator. --(WT-en) Dewet 15:15, 4 Jan 2005 (EST)

New Zealand, where I live, has a problem with mosquitoes arriving here on ships and aircraft. Our border bio-security people go to great trouble to prevent them coming here, and even greater trouble to eradicate them once they arrive and colonise a place. The fear isn't Malaria but the incurable mosquito borne diseases like Dengue and Ross River virus. The Prophylaxis section only applies to Malaria, not the other diseases, which are endemic in some of the Pacific Islands and probably carried by some people in NZ. The options are:

1. Either all the information on all the diseases comes into one article, which would make it huge and only half of it would be applicable anyway,
2. Or this is a general overview, with detailed information under the individual diseases, but with the common stuff and intros fir each disease in this article.

I am inclined to the latter, since we already have 2 articles about the diseases carried by mosquitoes. Is that an OK approach? -- (WT-en) Huttite 19:34, 4 Jan 2005 (EST)

OK, I think your second suggestion would be the way forward. We generalise the Mosquito article to be a generic summary (ie., just a few basic facts) and bite-prevention page, and then from there link to all the various diseases that mosquitoes carry. I assume that eg. dengue and yellow fever are transmittable through other means as well — that would strengthen the case to split them off. --(WT-en) Dewet 05:48, 5 Jan 2005 (EST)

Dengue and yellow fever are in different parts of the world and spread by different species, I understand. My thinking on the split was that there is common information (Mosquitoes) and geographically specific information (diseases). Having separate articles means travellers can select their specific combination of articles. -- (WT-en) Huttite 06:02, 5 Jan 2005 (EST)

Merge

I think the article is long enough that merging it with Pests would be less than ideal. The link from there should be enough.

Keep this article, it has sufficient size to stand on its own. /Yvwv (talk) 23:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. It's short enough to move with a redirect. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:16, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It is often good to link to a specific pest from the Stay safe section of a destination article. There is very little general information in the pest article, so linking to Mosquitoes is definitively better than linking to Pests#Mosquitoes. Even those wanting to read about pests in general are better served with a summary paragraph and a link than with a section as long as this article. --LPfi (talk) 08:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I've merged copy from this page into Pests#Mosquitoes based on the request to do so in the "merge" notice. A fair bit of the content was already replicated there. Given the debate here, however, I will wait a few weeks before creating a redirect page. Jnich99 (talk) 09:23, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

No further comment so will redirect now. --Nick ^talk 21:27, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Prevention de Béchamp, Ph.D.?

If travelers ARE indeed concerned about the mosquito itself, then why never let the tour guide prevent any outbreak of any pest, anyway? It's more cheaper in that sense, for self-explanatory starters. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 12:44, 7 October 2013 (UTC)