LIBRARY

DIPTERA 765
Many species live in brackish water, and the so-called salt marsh mosquitoes
have gained a notorious reputation as biters. Of these latter the famous
white-banded salt marsh or New Jersey mosquito, Aedes solUcitans (Walker),
has held undisputed first place for many years. It breeds in salt marshes along
the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maine to Texas, and many are the stories of
its size and efficiency. A. dorsalis (Meigen) a Holarctic species, breeds in North
America along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the shores of Hudson Bay
and also inhabits fresh water in California. A. cmnpestris Dyar and Knab lives
in mineral pools and brackish water and ranges throughout northern North
America and also breeds in fresh water. A. squamiger (Coq.), the California salt
marsh mosqUito, breeds along the Pacific coast of California, Anopheles multicolor
Cambouliu, according to Imms (1934), lives in saline pools containing
40 grams of chlorides per liter in Libyan oases, and A. turkhudi Liston of
India in a 2 per cent salt solution. A. stmdaicus Rodenwaldt is a salt-waterinhabiting
species in Malaysia; A. annulipes (Walker) lives in sea water in
Australia; and A. sacharovi Favr. occurs in brackish water in the Mediterranean
Basin.
OpiJex Juscus Hutton is peculiar in that the antennre of the males are not
plumose. It lives in sea water along the rocky coasts of New Zealand (Tillyard
1926).
The common snow mosquitoes, Aedes communis (DeGeer) (Holarctic) and
A. uenirovittis Dyar (western North America), hibernate in the egg stage and the
larvre breed in the temporary snow-fed pools in early summer. These are among
the most pestiferous of insects in the high mountains.
Any number of other biting'and annoying species might be included if space
permitted, but much more important are the disease-bearing mosquitoes which
have been responsible for more misery and deaths to the human race than any
other animals. The mosquitoes are not victims of the disease organisms that
they transmit to humans and other mammals, but merely have become the
necessary intermediate hosts by taking the parasites from an infected host, preserving
and incubating certain stages within their bodies, and then transmitting
back to similar hosts the living active forms that also require man and other
mammals to complete their life cycles. Since the females of most species appear
to require one or more meals of blood for nutriment to mature their eggs, they
must feed upon a suitable host, and in doing this the transfer of the disease
organism takes place. The mosquito is in some cases only a mechanical vector
of certain diseases.
One of the most important mosquito-borne diseases is malaria, perhaps the
most serious affliction of the human race, which is caused by microscopic protozoans
that attack the red blood corpuscles. Four types of malaria are produced
by four different species of the parasite:
1. Tertian malaria by Plasmodium vivax (Grassi and Feletti 1890), transmitted
by no less than 60 species and subspecies of Anopheles.
2. African tertian fever, caused by Plasmodium o1Jale Stephens 1922, a rare
parasite closely related to P. vivax.