Zika is not transmitted by the mosquito that carries West Nile – but it might be

UnDark, the new MIT science-journalism magazine, has a piece about unpublished research which hints that the Zika virus might be carried by Culex pipiens, which is the mosquito most common for transmitting West Nile virus and EEE in New England. The evidence is thin, just one mosquito pool in Brazil, but it’s not something we can dismiss.

That would be Not Good from our point of view. The mosquito species that most frequently transmits the Zika virus doesn’t travel much farther north than Philadelphia, but Culex is as much a part of New Hampshire life as blackflies.