# Aedes Life Cycle & Disease Transmission How an Aedes mosquito grows from egg to flying adult, and how she spreads dengue and chikungunya from one person to the next\. By Yenner Schmeidler Topic: Nature & Biology [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/qjSA55Sde5z2) ## Transcript ### 1. Meet Aedes This little garden holds a whole mosquito story, magnified\. Aedes mosquitoes are dark with white stripes on their legs and a white lyre shape on their back\. In a bucket of water, her young are already growing\. Drag anywhere to turn the garden\. A real adult is only about 4 to 7 millimetres long\. ### 2. Eggs wait above the water A female glues her tiny black eggs to the inside of a container, just above the waterline\. The eggs can survive drying out for up to eight months\. When rain or a refill covers them, they hatch\. Any small container works: a bucket, a plant saucer, an old tyre, even a bottle cap\. ### 3. Larvae: the wrigglers Each egg hatches into a larva, a wriggling water baby\. It hangs head down from the surface and breathes air through a little tube at its tail, called a siphon\. It eats tiny bits of food in the water and sheds its skin four times as it grows\. The larva stage lasts about five days to two weeks, depending on warmth\. ### 4. Pupae: resting commas Next, each larva becomes a pupa, shaped like a comma\. A pupa does not eat\. It floats at the surface, breathing through two tiny trumpets, while its body is rebuilt into a flying adult\. The pupa stage lasts only about two to three days\. ### 5. A mosquito takes off The pupa's skin splits at the surface and the adult climbs out, dries her wings and flies away\. In warm weather, egg to adult takes only seven to ten days\. Only females bite: they need a meal of blood to make their eggs\. Males drink flower nectar and never bite\. ### 6. The first bite Aedes bite mostly in the daytime\. If she bites someone who already has dengue or chikungunya virus in their blood, she sips up the virus with her meal\. The glowing specks here stand for the virus, drawn far larger than life\. A sick person can pass the virus to mosquitoes for a few days around the time of their fever\. ### 7. Inside the mosquito The virus does not make the mosquito sick\. It multiplies in her gut, then travels to her salivary glands, the place where her spit is made\. Only then can she pass it on\. For dengue this wait is about 8 to 12 days in warm weather\. Chikungunya can be ready in about 3 to 7 days\. ### 8. The second bite When she bites again, a little of her spit carries the virus into a new person\. Days later that person may get a high fever and aching joints\. The virus cannot jump from person to person by itself: the mosquito is the bridge\. Symptoms start about 4 to 10 days after the bite for dengue, and about 4 to 8 days for chikungunya\. An infected mosquito stays infectious for life\. ### 9. Break the chain No water, no new mosquitoes\. Once a week, empty containers and scrub their sides, because the eggs cling on even when the water is gone\. Covering water, screens and repellent help stop the bites too\. Dengue alone causes an estimated 390 million infections a year, so every emptied bucket counts\.