Inside Texas’s grand laboratory of dangerous mosquitoes

Austin, Texas — Under a microscope, a mosquito can look stunning. Their blue-green iridescent scales, purple bands, and attractive spotted wings shimmer — dazzling enough to forget, for a moment, the insect lives to take a sip of your blood.

Mosquitoes range in size, from smaller than your pinky fingernail to a commanding presence in your palm, but it takes a skilled eye and a steady hand to sort the most dangerous species.

At the Arbovirus-Entomology Laboratory of the Texas State Department of Public Health Services, getting a close-up look is a key step in an active statewide effort to keep vector-borne diseases at bay — and alert the rest of the country when a major outbreak is looming.

The US has proved successful in driving away some of the most common mosquito-borne diseases, like