Cold Spring Harb Protoc
August 2023
mosquitoes transmit several pathogens to humans and animals, including viruses that cause West Nile fever and St. Louis encephalitis and filarial nematodes that cause canine heartworm and elephantiasis. Additionally, these mosquitoes have a cosmopolitan distribution and provide interesting models for understanding population genetics, overwintering dormancy, disease transmission, and other important and ecological questions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFlarvae are well adapted to growing and developing in containers, and therefore collecting and rearing field-collected to adulthood in the laboratory is relatively straightforward. What is substantially more challenging is simulating natural conditions that encourage adults to mate, blood feed, and reproduce in laboratory settings. In our experience, this is the most difficult hurdle to overcome when establishing new laboratory colonies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Northern House mosquito, , is an important disease vector, and females are capable of surviving the winter in a state of overwintering diapause. This species' diapause response has been extensively studied, and recent evidence suggests that the circadian clock is involved in measuring seasonal changes in daylength to initiate the diapause response. However, differences in the circadian activity of diapausing and non-diapausing have not been thoroughly investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article includes new records, distribution, and updated checklist of Phlebotomine sand flies (Psychodidae, Diptera) in the Old World (Africa including West Indian Ocean Islands, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia) based on specimen collections housed in different repositories worldwide. About 124 species have primary types housed in 5 repositories including holotypes (45 species, 4 subspecies), syntypes (28 species, 3 subspecies), "types" (14 species), allotypes (10 species), paratypes (36 species, 3 subspecies), lectotypes (13 species), and cotype (5 species), mounted on 671 slides. New abbreviations were proposed for 2 subgenera in the genus Phlebotomus and 6 subgenera in the genus Sergentomyia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article includes the records and distribution of Phlebotomine sand flies (Psychodidae, Diptera) in the New World based on the specimen collections housed in 2 repositories, the US National Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Entomology, Florida State Collection of Arthropods. Approximately 128 species have primary types housed in the 2 repositories, including holotypes (47 species, 3 subspecies), "types" (7 species), allotypes (52 species, 6 subspecies), lectotypes (4 species), paratypes (93 species, 10 subspecies), and neoallotype (1 species), mounted on slides, with a total of 1,107 type slides. For species diversity, collection data from 24 countries in the sand fly database were analyzed according to the number of species present, specimen records, decade of collections, and countries where collections were conducted.
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