It’s the fourth year of a Canadian Centre for Grain Storage Research project on grain pests. The centre is located at the university and the insect research project is part of the Prairie Bio Vigilance network.

The network hopes to proactively identify invasive species of pests, disease and weeds across the Prairies, facilitating quicker response. Research is wholly based on farm volunteer samples.

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Now Toronto contacted an entomologist named Dr. Jason Gibbs from the University of Manitoba to ask if it’s safe to indulge. 

“Fishflies are eaten by a number of different cultures across the world. You can eat them raw (hold them by the wings and eat the rest), or you can dry them and use them in food preparations. They are high in protein, low in fat. So, mayflies would be a relatively healthy addition to a balanced diet,” Gibbs said in an email on July 30.

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Cameron ended up being diagnosed with both meningitis and encephalitis, two dangerous forms of brain inflammation, and spent a month in a Toronto hospital. Medical teams didn’t know why her son got sick, until lab reports later revealed a culprit McKissock had never heard of before: Jamestown Canyon, a viral infection carried by mosquitoes.

McKissock was stunned. “They asked us if we traveled, if we had gone anywhere or did anything,” she said. “And we said the only place we have been is our backyard.”

In recent decades, scientists began seeing more urban transmission, outside the typical insect ranges, said Dr. Amila Heendeniya, a clinical infectious diseases physician at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and an assistant professor at University of Manitoba.

“Something is changing,” he said, “either [through] climate change, the environment, and the urban sprawl — how we’re getting closer and closer to the woods.”

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