LIBRARY

754
COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
specks of soot floating on the surface of the water. AnoPheles lay the eggs singly
or in loose clusters on the water, and these are furnished with air floats. Aedes
and Psorophora oviposit on the ground in the summer and in the high mountains
hatch in the spring as soon as the snow begins to melt. Their great numbers
attest to the quantities of eggs laid.
The larva! are aquatic and live in all types of permanent and transitory fresh
water as well as in brackish and salt water. Different species within the genus
Anopheles may inhabit all these various types of water. Various species live in
fresh, running, and foul water, with different amounts of algre and plankton,
variable exposures to sun or shade, in large or small bodies of water as rivers,
creeks, ditches, swamps, marshes, lakes, ponds, springs, puddles, tidal pools,
and in water in tree holes, tin cans, rain barrels, fish ponds, water -collecting
plants, and in other temporary and artificial places. Culicine larvre rest at the
surface with the heads downwards vertically or at an angle while anopheIines
are suspended horizontally just beneath the surface film which they break with
small float hairs for a considerable distance posteriorly and only a short distance
anteriorly. They feed upon minute algre and other plankton on the surface of
or in the water. Certain members of the genera TiEniorhynchus and Ficalbia
Theobald are able to puncture water plants with the siphon and thus obtain air.
The family is not large in numbers of genera and species, but it is monstrous
in numbers of individuals. There are approximately 89 world genera and sub.
genera of which some 39 are North American. The most important and interesting
of these are: Aedes Meigen (Subgenera: Stegomyia Theob., 41 spp., Ochlerotatus
Lynch-Arribalzaga, 115 spp., Aedimorphtts Theob., 54 spp., and Finlaya
Theob., 92 spp.), all widely distributed throughout the world. Anopheles
Meigen (Subgenera: Anopheles Meigen, 61 spp., Myzomyia Blanchard, 80 spp.,
Nyssorhynchus Blanchard. 17 spp.), represented in tropical or temperate regions.
Culex Linn. (many subgenera) cosmopolitan with 309, world spp. and
65 North American spp. Psorophora Robineau-Desvoidy (Subgenera: Psorophora
R.-D., 8 spp., janthinosoma Lynch·Arrib., 10 spp., Grabhamia Theobald,
11 spp.), tropical America. Tceniorhynchus Lynch-Arrib. 1891 (Mansonia
Blanchard 1901) (Subgenera: TiEniorhynchus Lynch-Arrib., 5 spp., Mansonioides
Theobald 1907, 9 spp., Rhynchotrenia Brethes, 8 spp., Coquilletlidia Dyar,
27 spp.), all cosmopolitan in the tropics and wanner temperate regions. Theobaldia
Neveu-Lemaire (= Culiseta Felt), 8 spp., North American. Wyeomyia
Theobald, 3 spp., North American.
The larvre of most mosquitoes live in fresh water, and species of all the genera
listed above may live in this medium. In certain species of Aedes: A. triseriatus
(Say) of the eastern states and A. varipalpus (Coquillett) of the west, the larvre
live in the water collected in tree holes, while those of Wyeomyia smithii (Coq.)
inhabit the water held in the hollow leaves of the pitcher plant, Sarracenia
purpurea Linn., growing in the peat bogs of the United States east of the
Mississippi River, and Culex pipiens Linn., the common rain-barrel mosquito,
and C. 51asciata Say, considered domestic and house species, breed in rain
barrels, cans, pools, and other receptacles.