Should you remove bromeliads to fight Zika?
The popular landscaping plants, prized for their colorful leathery leaves and hearty disposition, are cursed with a nasty reputation for haboring hoardes of Zika-carrying mosquitoes. Mosquito control and public health officials are ripping them out of public areas and urging people to ban them for their backyards. Public works project designers are reworking plans so they are bromeliad free.
Is it necessary? Depends on who you ask.
There is no research showing that the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the most common species spreading Zika here, thrive in large numbers inside bromeliads, said Jorge Rey, director of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory in Vero Beach.
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