The tiger mosquito, named for its stripes, could also owe its name to the fear it provokes, since it is the vector of the dengue, Zika and chikungunya viruses. On La Réunion, a French Indian Ocean territory where the chikungunya epidemic is at its peak, hospitals are on alert, and six deaths have been recorded since the beginning of the year, announced by the French national health service on Wednesday, April 16. Dressed in white and armed with sprayers, 120 military personnel have been mobilized for a large-scale mosquito management campaign. In mainland France, there is a fear of the nuisance insect returning with the summer heat.

The tiger mosquito continues to expand its territory further north. Its conquest is a marker of climate change as well as rampant urbanization, as the insect quickly adapts to our habitats. In Le Monde, which has followed its progression, it has transitioned from an exotic danger to a local peril.

The newspaper sometimes confused or equated the tiger mosquito, Aedes Albopictus, by its Latin name, with its cousin Aedes Aegypti, a very similar creature and a carrier of the same diseases. Until 1996, references were made to Aedes Aegypti as the source of the ailments shared by both members of the subgenus (and we will spare you the various scholarly spellings of the same creature). Journalists, either very informed or conversely with little knowledge of entomology, would generically call it aedes or stegomyia throughout the articles.

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