Meet the
IF you thought Portmore, St Catherine was the mosquito capital of Jamaica, think again.
A trip to the forested interior of Cockpit Country would immediately set you straight, as a Jamaica Observer team recently found out.
As soon as we got out of the vehicle, a horde, nay, an army of the tiny black insects descended and attached themselves to our legs, arms, ears, cheeks, noses, foreheads. They were everywhere and waving our arms while hopping and skipping around did precious little to help. We scurried to put on long pants and sprayed exposed skin with insect repellent, but not before receiving hundreds of bumps from being bitten so aggressively.
Later, as we trekked through the forest, we could hear them buzzing around, but they didn’t bite as much. As soon as we stopped however, the assault would resume.
“Mosquito only trouble lazy man,” our tour guide, Dr Susan Koenig said, explaining the phenomenon.
She and her partner Mike Schwartz, who own and operate Windsor Research Centre, ostensibly coined the expression as a warning for their guests, for the insects are a mere bother to them.
“When you’re working and you’re so involved in the work, you don’t even notice them,” Koenig said.
She’s been in Cockpit Country for the past 15 years and as Director of Research at Windsor, leads the study into the plant and animal life of the forest, an expanse of over 20,000 hectares on rugged limestone rocks primarily in Trelawny.
She has done extensive work with birds and bats and has reported that 27 of Jamaica’s 28 endemic bird species and four of the five endemic bats are found only in Cockpit Country.
It’s also home to hundreds of other endemic species – from crabs, amphibians and reptiles to butterflies. Whether any of the 72 species of mosquito in the island, 36 per cent of which are endemic, are found only in Cockpit Country is yet to be seen, but Koenig is anxious for work to be done in that area.
“I don’t have the taxonomic expertise to identify mosquitoes, but I invite anyone who can to come and do so, certainly,” she told the Observer.
This would be particularly useful she added because while all the existing mosquito research concentrates on the eastern end of the island, there is valuable information in Cockpit Country given the large numbers of the insects present and their role in pollination and as a food source for bats.
— KT