For most people, mosquitoes are just annoying plagues. For Rampa Rattanarithikul they are the most beautiful animals in the world. For half a century, the Thai scientist has devoted her life to mosquitoes. Thousands of copies have collected, described and cataloged them over the last 50 years. More than 420 new species has identified them, some dozen species rediscovered. And she even founded a museum: a museum of insects and wonders of nature.
"Mosquitoes are my enemies," she says, laughing and, of course, means exactly the opposite.She shares the passion for mosquitoes with Manop, her husband. Rattanarithikul was 19 years old when she started a mosquito research in a laboratory in Bangkok. 14 percent of the world's almost 3000 species are native to Southeast Asia. When blood sucking, the mosquitoes can infect humans with dangerous viruses or parasites.
Malaria, for example, is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito. Around 500 million people worldwide are infected with the tropical disease, and every 30 seconds a human being dies of malaria. The infections with dengue fever have almost doubled to just under 60,000 in Thailand alone. The 46 species of mosquitoes occurring in Germany generally do not transmit any pathogens.
In the tropical regions of the world, however, mosquitoes are a permanent threat to health. Rattanarithikul has contributed to the fact that physicians worldwide can differentiate the many harmless mosquitoes from the truly dangerous species. Officially, Rattanarithikul has long retired with her 69 years. But she still does not stop. "Without their research," says insect researcher Ralph Harbach from the Museum of Natural History in London, "we would be in this area forty years behind."
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