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Study: Climate Change Could Cause Mosquitoes To Evolve More Rapidly

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- New research suggests that climate change may be enabling mosquitoes to evolve more rapidly.

That's according to a recent study in "Communications Biology."

According to the Yale Climate Connections, scientists "found a strong correlation between the rate of speciation and levels of atmospheric CO2 and temperature."

Related: Climate Change Facts & Evidence From NASA

Researchers say the evolution of mosquitoes could have serious consequences, including a rise in mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, zika and dengue.

"If the warming and the high atmospheric CO2 keeps going on, there would be more species, so the population would be more diversified," said Chufei Tang, PhD candidate at China Agricultural University. "There would be also more places with longer time that mosquitoes could breed. Thus the mosquitoes would have population growth, bringing higher density."

As a result, areas where mosquito-borne diseases had previously been eradicated could soon be facing modern-day outbreaks.

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