Researchers expect these challenges to arise more often in the future, since climate change is raising the risk of more intense hurricanes, heat and flooding, as well as creating conditions that are more conducive to mosquito development and their incubation of viruses.Laboratory workers regularly test blood collected from caged "sentinel chickens" living at 17 sites within the county, so officials will know if the chickens are getting bitten and becoming infected with viruses spread by mosquitoes.Last week in Brevard County, on Florida’s east coast, traps collected at least 22 times the area’s weekly baseline mosquito count, according to data reported to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services."Every mosquito habitat has eggs laying in the soil, waiting for this rain, [it] gets flooded and you have literally millions upon millions emerging at once," Markowski said.That’s when culex mosquitoes — which Markowksi calls the most "worrisome" because they are responsible for transmitting West Nile fever and St. Louis encephalitis — begin to come out."