a handbook of the mosquitoes of north america - Systematic Catalog ...

RIOSQCITOES OF NORTH AMERICA
widened at the base, gradually tapering, but expanding at the apex;
about seven times as long as wide. Pecten consists of 12-14 teeth
on the basal third of tube; four pairs of prominent hair tufts beyond
the pecten along the posterior margin; near the apex there is usually
a small extra pair of sub-apical tufts. The hair tufts on the air-tube
of this species shows rather marked variation and frequently five
pairs of tufts may be present.
This species is widely distributed throughout North Amer-
ica and Europe. The adults are most commonly found in
swampy areas, open grassmy meadow-lands, and rarely about
dwellings. The larvae occur in grassy pools, edges of ponds,
etc., and brood follows brood throughout the season. The adults
are not known to attack man though they are recorded as feed-
ing on cold-blooded animals as frogs. Though I have col-
lected hundreds of them and reared them, I have never suc-
ceeded in inducing one to bite me.
Crm~x PIPIENS Linnaeus 3
C&x pipkm Linn., Syst. Nat., ed. 10, 602. 1758.
Female. (Fig. 12.) Length 4.5 mm. ; wing 4 mm. Proboscis
slender, brown, darker toward tip. Occiput dark brown, with brown-
ish-white narrow curved scales, sides and ocular margins with some
flat white ones; nape with numerous erect, forked brown scales.
Mesonotum brown, with two narrow bare lines in front, elsewhere
uniformly clothed with narrow golden brown scales. Abdomen black
having a bluish and slight bronzy reflection; basal segmental bands
of white scales, wide at middle, narrowed at the sides where they
join triangular shaped white patches ; venter clothed with pale yel-
lowish scales. Legs long, slender, brown scaled with metallic re-
flections ; femora white scaled berieath.
Jlole lzypopygizrm. (Figs. 1 and 2, Pl. XVI.) Side-pieces more
than twice as long as wide, tapering to the apex; apical lobes prom-
inent; each bears eight appendages-beginning at distal end-a seta,
a leaf, a flattened seta, two setae and three rods. Clasper short,
slightly expanded at middle. Tenth sternites prominent, very com-
plicated in structure, each half ending distally in a crown of rather
stout spines and basally immediately beneath the tergite of the ninth
segment. The mesosome is a paired structure, each half with three
3 This species has about thirty synonyms but it would seem use-
less to list them here. Consult Dyar (1928).