Well, it has been a long while since we updated vectorecology.org.  Sometimes, personal life intervenes, and updates took a back-burner for the last 9 months.  But, time to shake off the dust.  So, I will start with this image of Culex egg rafts in a stagnant pool, part of an artificial creek.  The egg rafts are the black specs on the water surface.  This genus of mosquitoes is responsible for the transmission of a number of pathogens, most particularly the zoonotic, bird viruses St. Louis encephalitis virus and West Nile virus.  One interesting phenomenon associated with these pathogens has been increased risk of human disease during periods of droughts.  There have been many hypotheses about why this might be, and one with some support is that normally flowing creeks dry down to be stagnant pools of water, a habitat Culex mosquitoes seem to prefer.  Looking at this photo, that certainly makes sense, but I don’t know that anyone has experimentally confirmed this (for example, using replicated streams or stream sections).  That would be a fun experiment to do!