“The light is green: you can open“. We enter the current insectarium, with its director, Anna-Bella Failloux, who specifies: “In every room there is a type of mosquito“Here we breed mosquitoes to study them and better understand the diseases that threaten the Antilles, but now also the mainland, such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
Encouraged by global warming, deforestation and unbridled urbanization, the transmission of infectious diseases by mosquitoes is increasingly scrutinized by researchers at the Pasteur Institute. The establishment announced Tuesday January 21 to invest 90 million euros to build a “research center on infections linked to climate and environment“, which will emerge from the ground in 2028 in the heart of its historic site in Paris and will house innovative research in secure laboratories.
“Temperatures are increasing, living conditions are deteriorating: we are creating conditions for the development of mosquitoes adapted to life with humans“, underlines the entomologist who heads the Arbovirus and insect vectors unit at the Pasteur Institute. A few mosquitoes are flying around us.
“Each cage has between 2,000 to 5,000 mosquitoes. In the future building, we can multiply this by six”
Anna-Bella Faillouxat franceinfo
-
Work on the new buildingmuch bigger” have already started. It will allow scientists to carry out full-scale tests: “We can try to vary, for example, the temperature. Here you are at 28 degrees all the time. However, in the environment in which mosquitoes are, the temperature can vary. It can be lower, higher… And then, there are fluctuations night and day. Which we cannot reproduce there. We are going to have the conditions that allow us to mimic what happens in nature. It’s important.
“We are seeing a very rapid evolution of the emergence of pathogens“, warns the director of the Pasteur Institute Yasmine Belkaid, on franceinfo. “If we look at the evolution of viruses and pathogens over the last 10, 20 or 30 years, there is an acceleration“, she explains. She also notes an acceleration of epidemics over the same period.
This development is due to “ecological chaos“formed by climate change and deforestation,” she assures: “Climate change will change how insect vectors that transmit these pathogens can evolve and change environments. For example, mosquitoes. Ticks are also transmitting viruses at an accelerated rate.“, explains Yasmine Belkaid.
As for deforestation, it leads to the displacement of populations of animals potentially carrying diseases transmissible to humans: “We are in the process of imposing changes on pathogens in terms of their location, but also their pathogenesis. This year, there were a lot more mosquitoes in Paris, we had cases of dengue fever in France.” metropolitan area, recalls in particular the director of the Pasteur Institute.
