'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
As if rising sea levels, increased drought, and more extreme weather events won't be enough to deal with, climate change will also bring us longer mosquito seasons.
That's the conclusion reached by scientists at the University of Florida, who say their research on the pesky insects shows that the bugs can very quickly adapt to changes in the temperature around them.
In regions poised to experience newly tropical temperatures in a warmer world, they report, mosquitoes could become a year-round nuisance. In places that won't get quite that warm – Canada, for example – they may still be able to reduce the amount of time they spend dormant due to chilly conditions, leaving us fending off mosquitoes for much longer than we're used to.
The findings come from experiments the researchers conducted on 1,000 mosquitoes that were gathered in and around Gainesville, Fla.
As they detail in a study published this month in the journal Ecology, they placed the mosquitoes in vials and then placed the vials into a water bath. They then adjusted the water temperature, which in turn altered the temperature inside the vials.
As the temperature fluctuated, the researchers made note of when each mosquito became what is known as "cold bounded" – the hibernation-like dormant state that they enter when conditions are too cold for them to thrive.
Over a period of several months, they found that mosquitoes had a larger acceptable range of temperatures in the spring and fall than during the summer, suggesting the insects have evolved to cope with the wild fluctuations that can occur during spring and fall.
“We found that the mosquitoes in our study are what we call 'plastic,' meaning that, like a rubber band, the range of temperatures they can tolerate stretches and contracts at different times of year,” Brett Scheffers, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the University of Florida's wildlife ecology and conservation department, said in a press release.
“That tells us that as climate change makes our autumns and winters warmer, mosquitoes in more temperate regions are well prepared to be active during those times."
By some estimates, summers in the Northern Hemisphere will last for as long as six months by the end of the century.
The researchers say it's not clear what allows the mosquitoes to adapt so quickly to changing temperatures, or if other insects are able to do the same.
One possibility is natural selection. Because most mosquitoes only live for a few days, it could be that those born during spring and fall need to be able to adapt to temperature swings, whereas those born in the summer can survive without developing that skill.
The next step for the Florida researchers is to determine whether that theory could be true, or whether there is something else at play.
Either way, the researchers are warning us about more than the nuisance aspect of mosquitoes. Because the insects are major carriers of infections such as West Nile virus and dengue fever, they say their findings point to the need to prepare for increased prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases as the planet warms.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.