LIBRARY

752
COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
Family CULICIDJE Stephens 1829 (Cu-lic'i-dre, from the Latin culex, a gnat).
German, Stechmucken. French, Les moustiques. Mosquitoes.
Small. fragile. slender, long-legged flies with hairs and scales covering the
bodies ancj. appendages. Brown, tawny, gray, or black, often with white and
paler markings, or metallic and brilliant. Head small, subglobular, with slender
neck. Proboscis or labium long; rest of mouth parts piercing; palpi stiff. Eyes
reniform. Ocelli absent. Antennre long, slender, filiform; pubescent and with
whorls of hairs, plumose or bushy in males; 14- to 15-segmented, first segment
ring-like, second globose and cupped at extremity. Thorax compact, arched;
scutellum rounded or trilobed; hairs arranged in groups on the pleurre. Legs
long and slender, fragile; coxre short; tarsi long; claws simple or denticulate.
Wings long and narrow, posterior margin fringed with hairs and scales; six
longitudinal veins extend to the margins; veins beset with scales; two basal
cells; plain or dappled. Halteres distinct. Abdomen slender, lO-segmented, the
last two or three modified by the genitalia; male terminal three segments turned
over; hypopygium consists of lobes, plates, claspers, claspettes, parameres, and
side-pieces and is useful in separating the species. The larvre or wrigglers are
usually free living and active; elongated and with enlarged head, greatly en·
larged fused thorax, and slender nine-segmented abdomen. Head free. with
slender neck and many tufts of hairs. Antennre short, one-segmented, with
median antennal tuft of hairs. Eyes, two pairs; large compound eyes in front
and smaller accessory eyes behind. Mouth parts complicated, consisting of
labrum. prominent toothed mandibles, large flattened maxillre, short palpi,
labial plates, and two dense mouth brushes. Thorax with large brushes of hairs.
Abdomen with lateral abdominal hair tufts on segments I to VII; segment
VIII has the large cylindrical chitinized respiratory siphon (absenl in Anopheles)
with comb of many very small scales in rows near base and with two large
hair tufts and two rows of flattened spines called pecten. The siphon is closed
by five flaps which are normally extended or spread out to catch the surface
film for support. On segment IX is located the sc1erotized dorsal plate, four
large tracheal or anal gills, surrounding the anus, and the large prominent dorsal
brush and the smaller ventral brush. The pupre or tumblers are active and characterized
by the large cephalothorax (fused head and thorax) which has a pair
of conspicuous respiratory horns or trumpets and the small slender nine-segmented
and tail-like abdomen with a pair of large chitinous anal paddles or
fins. Both the larvre and pupre move by a succession of quick paddle-like motions
of the abdomen.
In s.ize mosquitoes vary from the tiny Formosan, Aedes jormosensis Yamada,
with a wing expanse of 2.5 mm. and the tropical American, Uranot;;enia lowii
Theobald. with an expanse of 3 nun., to the so-called American ga1llnipper,
Psorophora ciliata (Fab.) which has a body length of 9 rom. and a wing expanse
of 15 mm. In the last the larvre are predacious on aquatic animals and the
adults are bloodsuckers.
The biology of mosquitoes is so complicated and variable that it is impossible
to treat the subject adequately here. Students are referred to the many books