Surface Conditions Limiting Larval Sites of Certain Marsh Mosquitoes1

Abstract

Literature on the bionomics of mosquitoes that develop in shallow bodies of ground water, while replete with accounts of gross distribution of larvae, leaves much in doubt about the minute aspects of developmental sites. Among the more detailed works dealing with species in the United States are those based on observations in certain large reservoirs and natural lakes of the South where large areas of fairly uniform conditions obtain. Bang et al. (1943) showed that larvae of Anopheles walkeri (Theob.) occurred in Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee wherever the water was densely shaded by emergent vegetation and were especially abundant in communities of cutgrass (Zizaniopsis) shaded by willow or buttonbush. Eyles (1948) demonstrated that larvae of both A. walkeri and A. quadrimaculatus Say were abundant in areas shaded by cutgrass or willow wherever the mean maximum surface temperature of the water did not exceed 31° C.