A Population Of Uranotaenia Anhydor From Death Valley, With Descriptions Of All Stages And Discussion Of The Complex (Diptera, Culicidae)

Abstract

Uranotaenia anhydor Dyar, 1907 is regarded as one of the rarer North American mosquitoes. The original description was based on a single larva collected by Dyar and Caudell on June 2, 1906 in a swamp full of reeds at Sweet water Junction (now part of National City), near San Diego, Calif. Subsequently, Dyar reared a series of adults of both sexes from larvae collected in Old Town, San Diego (Howard, Dyar and Knab, 1917, 4: 1041–1042), Freeborn (1926:350) reported a single female from Camp Kearney (near San Diego), and E. A. Seaman and C. S. Richards found two larvae near Bonsall, San Diego County (Seaman, 1945). Brookman and Reeves (1953: 234–235) were the first to report this species outside of San Diego County, having reared an adult of each sex from two pupae collected in northwestern Baja California, Mexico, some 45 miles south of San Diego. These authors also mentioned a series of rubbed females apparently of this species collected at lights by C. B. and R. N. Philip at Fairbanks Springs, Ash Meadows, Nye County, Nevada, on August 21, 1949. In the summer and fall of 1953, C. S. Richards took a small series of anhydor females in light traps and one larva and one pupa at St. David, Cochise County, Arizona (Richards, 1954 in lit .).