Spanish newspaper: "Killer Wasps" worries the population in Spain

The spread of the insect "Zelus renardii" known as the killer insect, or "killer wasp" raised great concern in Spain after it was spread in the United States of America last year, and it works to kill other insects and invertebrates, and cause harm to humans.

The Spanish newspaper "Labangordia" indicated that this insect is from Mexico and the south of the United States, and it is one of the other species that has arrived in our country, which is separated by climate change, among other things.

The newspaper explained that since the first records of its existence in 2012, in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, it has spread widely in Europe and Spain, and it was discovered for the first time in the Valencia region, then in Andalusia, but it was already discovered in Catalonia or Madrid.

The killer insect is a heterogeneous organism with partially hard wings and has a sucking mouth that feeds on the blood of other invertebrates, as it is a predator, orange in color and has six legs, long antennae. Sensitivity to movement.

And a study was published at the beginning of April 2021, that collected nine cases of bites in Spain since 2018, and all of them occurred in the Valencia community, although one case was recorded in Cadiz and the other in Alcala de Henares.

The so-called "killer wasps", which invaded North America in 2020, have aroused widespread interest. These wasps have spread across the Pacific Northwest, destroying bee colonies.

"The similarity between wasps and aedes mosquitoes is that they both come from outside, and are now colonizing an area where they had never been before," says Penn Pagak, an entomologist with the US Army Public Health Command. He believes that this reveals the size of the risks involved in global travel and trade by spreading zoonotic diseases in large areas of the world.