National Geographic: Summertime means disease-carrying insects. Here’s what you should know.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that with the changing and warming of the earth, temperature sensitive insects, such as mosquitoes and ticks, will be able to increase their distribution globally. With their new reach, more than a billion people are estimated to be exposed to insect transmissible diseases such as Dengue and Yellow fever in the coming years. From ticks, there is already a notable increase in prevalence for Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted Fever in 2017 compared to previous years. Tick borne diseases had increased by 20% and within the last 10 years, the cases have more than doubled. This may correspond to the spread of tick populations northward and their ability to reproduce more quickly in warmer temperatures. For mosquitos, the warming climate speeds up the processes that lead to infection: replication of the virus in the gut, movement into the salivary glands, and feedings.