Google put in a proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency to release 32 million mosquitoes in Florida over the course of two years. But it may not be as bad as it sounds.
The proposal
The goal is to reduce the population numbers of Culex quinquefasciatus, or the southern house mosquito, an invasive species of mosquito originally native to the tropical islands south of Florida and the primary transmitter of West Nile virus.
The plan involves releasing 16 million sterile male southern house mosquitoes annually for two years in limited testing sites throughout both Florida and California. The males are infected with a naturally occurring virus called Wolbachia. The virus causes the wild females who mate with the infected males to lay sterile eggs that will not hatch, interrupting the population’s ability to reproduce.
Public reaction
Florida residents raised concerns over social media about the impact and reliability of Google’s proposal.
“That’s how Florida got lovebugs,” said user Gail Holt Maier.
User Joyce Fulgoni-Britton wrote, “I see another love bug situation.”
These users were not the only ones to share this sentiment. This is a common urban legend, the idea that lovebugs were bioengineered in Florida universities to control mosquito populations.
However, lovebugs weren’t engineered or genetically modified. They are a naturally occurring species that migrated north from their native territory of Central America. In fact, love bugs don’t feed on mosquitoes at all. They prefer decaying plant matter and flower nectar.
Users also feared how they might be impacted by 32 million additional mosquitoes introduced to their home, including worries about increased biting or overwhelming amounts of mosquitoes swarming their backyards.
Katie Wade, a Gainesville resident and senior at the University of Florida, said while she worried the mosquitoes may be a nuisance, she was overall in favor of mosquito control methods such as the one Google has proposed. Especially as climate change and globalization allows these bugs to expand and spread disease more easily.
Environmental impact
Eva Buckner, an associate professor and specialist in medical entomology at the University of Florida says Florida residents will “absolutely not” notice the additional bugs.
Male mosquitoes do not feed on blood and therefore cannot bite or transmit disease, she said. Therefore, they have little interest in humans and are unlikely to bother them.
“The males, their interest is just mating with the females. That's what they focus on,” Buckner said.
Additionally, southern house mosquitoes are not considered a pest or nuisance species. They prefer to feed on birds, so they don’t bite humans as often or aggressively as other species that have evolved to identify human pheromones, such as Aedes aegypti. Because of this, Florida residents are unlikely to notice anything different about their typical summer bloodsuckers, who are currently in their peak season.
However, when a southern house mosquito does go rogue and bite a human, it can be dangerous.
Mosquito-borne illness in Florida
“Sometimes they can't find a bird to take a blood meal from, or a human just happens to be there. So they're like, ‘Okay, I'll take advantage of this opportunity,’ and they bite a human. And that's how people get infected with West Nile virus,” Buckner said.
Birds are the primary hosts of West Nile virus, but on rare occasions, the disease jumps to humans via mosquitoes that have fed on infected birds. This is called a spillover event. Notably, a human case of West Nile virus was recently identified in Gainesville, the only case present in Florida this year so far. In 2025, there were 13 cases throughout the state.
West Nile virus isn’t the only mosquito-borne illness present in Florida. St. Louis encephalitis virus and eastern equine encephalitis virus are both also native to the state. Florida also hosts some exotic diseases that have been introduced from regions in subtropical Africa and Southeast Asia. The most common of these is dengue fever, but cases of both Zika virus and chikungunya have also occurred.
Many of these illnesses have serious symptoms, including effects on the central nervous system such as encephalitis, swelling of the brain tissue, and meningitis, swelling of the protective layer around the brain and spinal cord. Some, such as eastern equine encephalitis, have mortality rates as high as 30 percent. Mosquitoes are also the deadliest animal in the world, causing 263 million cases of illness and 597,000 deaths across 83 countries in 2023.
“While the chances for getting a mosquito-borne disease may not be very high,” Buckner said, “the symptoms could be severe, and so I always think it's important to try and protect yourself.”
Mosquito control methods
Beyond Google’s proposal, several mosquito control programs already exist throughout Florida.
The primary method many of these programs use is adulticides, a pesticide that is sprayed in the air to kill adult, flying mosquitoes. However, it is costly and ineffective to target mosquitoes once they are fully grown, so many other methods that target mosquito reproduction or larval stages have become more attractive.
Some of these alternatives include larvicides, which are pesticides sprayed into stagnant water to target mosquito larva, as well as biological alternatives like integrating mosquito fish or chickens to naturally lower mosquito populations through predation. This use of multiple pathways to controlling mosquito numbers is referred to as integrated mosquito management, or IMM.
One of the programs using these methods is the Citrus County Mosquito Control District. Tarolyn Frisbie is the public education specialist for this program.
“It’s a service that you don't realize you need or even know exists until it's bad. We do our job so well that people have stopped realizing how important of a job it is,” Frisbie said.
Why we need mosquito control
Before mosquito control, Florida was nearly uninhabitable, she said. Its hot and humid weather year-round and swampy terrain make it prime breeding ground for mosquitoes in any season. This not only promoted the native population to extremes but also allowed exotic species to easily establish themselves when introduced through travel.
“Because of mosquito control, we can actually live here,” she said, “and not just live here, but also we get millions and millions of dollars in tourism and visitation.”
Alternative methods, like that of the Google proposal, are particularly important to managing these populations, described Blake Jenkins, administrative coordinator of Citrus County Mosquito Control District.
“Our goal is to treat them in the larvae stage before they turn into a flying, biting adult, because in the larvae stage they pose no threat to any humans or animals for mosquito-borne diseases,” Jenkins said.
Additionally, Buckner said the Google proposal was promising because southern house mosquitoes have been shown to be resistant to traditional adulticide sprays. Sterile male treatment can also have more lasting effects on the population, she said.
“They actually store the sperm and then use that sperm to produce all of the offspring, or the eggs, for the rest of their lives. So that's really exciting, that just one mating event can lead to a female mosquito producing sterile offspring for the rest of her life,” Buckner said.
How to protect yourself
There are also measures individuals can take at home to protect themselves and help manage mosquito populations. One of the most important of these is something called source reduction.
“That just means that once a week you go around and you look for any container that might be holding water, even something as small as a bottle cap in your yard, and you dump it out,” Buckner said.
Mosquitoes use stagnant or standing water to lay their eggs, so removing these breeding grounds can help to disrupt their life cycle. Further, many of the species that primarily transmit mosquito-borne illnesses, including the southern house mosquito, are container breeders. This means rather than breeding in swamps, marshes or ponds, like other species, they prefer to breed in water left in manmade containers like buckets or pots. These mosquitoes are much more common in urban areas and therefore encounter humans more often.
According to Frisbie, the prevalence of these species is also worsened by Florida’s ongoing development.
“If you're not dumping out containers around your house once a week, you could actually be responsible for producing those mosquitoes,” Buckner said.
Additionally, when going outside you can wear long, loose-fitting sleeves and pants to create a barrier between your skin and the mosquito’s proboscis, the needle-like organ it uses to puncture. You can also use an EPA-registered insect repellent containing either DEET, picaridin, oil of lemon eucalyptus, or IR3535, the active ingredients recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jenkins called this the “four Ds”: defend with repellant, dress to protect yourself, drain containers, and avoid dawn and dusk.
What’s next
Google’s proposal is still under review by the EPA, but if approved, Buckner said Florida residents are likely to see a reduction in West Nile virus cases.
“And that’s so exciting,” she said.
