Mosquitoes tend to bring out the worst in most of us. When we hear that high-pitched buzzing and feel that familiar bite, most of us have one basic response: kill the offender. Swat it or crush it, but kill it quickly, along with as many of its neighbours as possible before they get the chance to bite as well.

Many Yukoners seem to think that the year 2000 has produced a bumper crop of mosquitoes, something that happens regularly enough in the North. During "bad" years such as this one, it can admittedly be hard to take the broader view, but the next time you splat a blood-filled mosquito on your arm, try remembering that the pesky little critters do have a role to play in the grander scheme of things.

"There are a lot of them so they must be doing something useful," says Hugh Danks. An entomologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Danks has written on the ecological role of various northern biting flies.

"They are an important resource for birds for example; the chicks of some birds rely quite heavily on insects for food," says Danks. The mosquitoes show up just as the chicks are growing fast and need lots of energy.

Even more conveniently, the mosquitoes can provide free food delivery for the chicks; when the insects come in for a free meal, the young birds get their chance to eat as well.

Fish also feed on mosquitoe larvae, though Danks points out that mosquitoes and fish prefer their water in different forms. "Most northern mosquitoes breed in spring melt pools, which do not have fish in them," he says.

The fish benefit when the mosquitoes are so abundant that plenty of dead adults fall into the water, offering themselves up as fish food for hungry grayling and char.

The next time you are contemplating a swarm of mosquitoes plastered to your screen door or the netting on your tent fly, waiting for an invitation to come into dinner, try remembering where you have chosen to live. The North provides most of the neighbourhood amenities that any discriminating mosquito might desire; lots of standing water, generally cool temperatures, and plenty of rotting vegetation.

Mosquitoe larvae feed on bacteria that grow on fine organic particles, such as those produced by decomposing plants. Plants decompose so slowly here that mosquitoes have a smorgasbord of goodies from which to choose.

While we tend to think of mosquitoes as bloodsuckers thriving on our red corpuscles, mosquitoes also delicately sip on nectar. Both males and females will sip nectar from willows, flowers and other plants to get the energy they need to fly. Also many kinds of mosquitoes rarely attack humans, feeding on birds or other animals instead.

Only the females go for blood, and it is nothing personal; they are just trying to get enough energy to lay a batch of eggs. Female mosquitoes look for a red-blooded victim after mating. While some mosquitoes can produce eggs without a blood meal, for most of the common varieties of mosquitoes, no blood means no eggs.

"The general rule is that if they get a complete blood meal, they develop a complete egg batch and deposit it. Then they will need another blood meal for another egg batch," says Danks.

Male mosquitoes swarm when it is time to mate. When females enter these living clouds, the males recognize them by the vibrations of their wingbeats, and they are all humming in the same key.

"It's about middle C,"says Danks. "If you have perfect pitch, you can attract the males, or you could use a tuning fork to attract them."

Humans are not the only species harassed by mosquitoes. Thousands of mosquitoes can feed simultaneously on one caribou, literally harassing them to death in worst-case scenarios.

Researchers have estimated that mosquitoes in northern Canada can reach densities of 12 million adult mosquitoes per hectare. In the name of science, one researcher in northern Canada offered up his bare forearm to see just how many mosquitos would attack it at once. At the measured rate of 280 forearm bites per minute, its estimated that an adult male could lose half his blood in less than two hours.

Unfortunately for us, mosquitoes do not have a lot of natural predators. Fish cannot rely on them too much as mosquito larvae are only around early in the season. But human victims have attempted to make up for that lack of enemies by expending huge amounts of time and energy on ways to control mosquitoes.

In fact most of what we know about mosquitos has been learned as a result of research focussed on the best ways to zap them; figuring out their role in nature has definitely been secondary.

"Gathering knowledge gets funded less than applied types of research," says Danks, who thinks it is unfortunate that there is no taxonomist working on mosquitoes full-time in Canada.

He thinks that studying mosquitoes could tell us a lot about northern ecosystems in which they are abundant, pointing out that unlike some rare and hard to find species, there are lots of mosquitoes and that could be used as an advantage in research.

"Because of their commonness and abundance, we could perhaps use them to show the quality of habitat for mosquitoes, or use them as an environmental indicator," he says.

But the truth of the matter is that most of us are looking for the best ways to keep mosquitoes away from us or to kill them most effectively. Danks thinks these efforts only go so far. "There is not much you can really do about them anyway. They are there to stay so you have to get used to them."

Hugh Danks can be contacted at hdanks@mus-nature.ca.