Photo caption: Sting of death<\/strong><\/p>\n {credit}Preethi Krishnamoorthy{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n Preethi captured this photo of a mosquito feeding on plant nectar, the mosquito’s main food (not blood, as popularly assumed), in June 2018 at Srirangapatna in Karnataka, India. She describes it thus:<\/strong><\/p>\n Preethi Krishnamoorthy<\/p><\/div>\n Of the millions of animals known to mankind, no other animal has claimed as many lives as the ordinary mosquito. In India, the most common diseases transmitted by mosquitoes are\u00a0 malaria, dengue, lymphatic filariasis, kala-azar, Japanese encephalitis and chikungunya, dengue being the most rapidly spreading vector-borne disease in the world. While the existence of these viruses and parasites are beyond our control, their spread via mosquitoes is accentuated by man-made climate change.<\/em><\/p>\n With the increase in global temperatures, we are creating more mosquito-friendly habitats. Mosquitoes are now spreading to higher latitudes and altitudes and spreading diseases to places where they never existed before.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Congratulations Preethi for getting into our top ten!<\/strong><\/p>\n Over the last ten days, we rolled out the top ten finalists of 5th edition of the\u00a0Nature India<\/em>\u00a0photo contest<\/a>\u00a02018 in no particular order of merit. Watch this space as we announce the top three winners of the contest by the end of January 2019.<\/p>\n Nature India\u2019<\/em>s final decision to chose the winner will be partly influenced by\u00a0the engagement and reception these pictures receive here at the\u00a0Indigenus<\/a>\u00a0blog, on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>. To give all finalists a fair chance, we will consider the\u00a0social media engagement each picture gets only during the first seven days of its announcement. Till then, promote, share and like your favourite entries with the hashtag\u00a0#NatureIndphoto.<\/p>\n The winner of the contest will get a cash award of $350, the second prize is worth $250 and the third $200. Photographs will be judged for novelty, creativity, quality and printability by a panel of Nature Research editors and photographers alongside a leading Indian scientist working in the area of vector-borne diseases. The winner and two runners-up will receive a copy of the\u00a0Nature India<\/em>\u00a0Annual Volume 2017 and a bag of goodies (including Collector\u2019s first\u00a0issues of\u00a0Nature\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Scientific American<\/em>\u00a0and some other keepsakes) from the Nature Research. One of the winning entries also stands a chance of being featured on the cover a forthcoming print publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Preethi Krishnamoorthy,\u00a0Project Assistant, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India … Read more<\/a> Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/files\/2019\/01\/10-2.jpg\" "\\"10\\"")
<\/a>\n
<\/a>And with that we come to the end of our long list\u00a0for the 2018 contest! The contest got us some\u00a0wonderful\u00a0entries from around the world.\u00a0We are delighted to have received a wide variety of entries despite the tougher than usual theme in\u00a0\u2018vector-borne diseases\u2019<\/em>, which called for more thought, creativity and originality.<\/h3>\n