Anopheles (Cellia) culicifacies Giles, 1901b s

Dawah, Hassan A., Abdullah, Mohammed A., Ahmad, Syed Kamran, Turner, James & Azari-Hamidian, Shahyad, 2023, An overview of the mosquitoes of Saudi Arabia (Diptera: Culicidae), with updated keys to the adult females, Zootaxa 5394 (1), pp. 1-76 : 11

Anopheles (Cellia) culicifacies Giles, 1901b s .l. ( Fig. 6 )

Type locality. Hoshangabad, India .

Distribution. Members of this species complex are found in the Afrotropical, Oriental and Palaearctic Regions ( Azari-Hamidian et al. 2019). In the Middle East, a member or members of the complex have been recorded in Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen ( Knight 1953b; Mattingly & Knight 1956; Kouznetsov 1976; White 1980; Minář 1991; Glick 1992; van Harten & Wagener 1994; Al-Ghamdi et al. 2008; Rueda et al. 2008; Al Ahmad et al. 2011; Gunathilaka & Karunaraj 2015; Gunathilaka 2018; Azari-Hamidian et al. 2019; Camp et al. 2019; Irish et al. 2016, 2020; Maquart et al. 2021; Wilkerson et al. 2021). A species of the complex was recorded for the first time in Saudi Arabia by Al-Ghamdi et al. (2008)

Remarks. The An. culicifacies complex includes five sibling species in the Oriental Region that are informally designated species A, B, C, D and E. They cannot be distinguished morphologically ( Kar et al. 1999; Harbach 2013). Alahmed et al. (2019) suggested that one or more species of this complex are present in Saudi Arabia; therefore, further investigation is needed to determine which species of the complex is or are present in the country.

Medical importance. At least some species of the complex are major vectors of malaria in southern Asia and have been recorded in the majority of the malaria affected countries ( Sunil et al. 2013; Sharma et al. 2014; Sharma & Dev 2015; Schaffner et al. 2021). In Yemen, it is the principal vector of malaria ( Kouznetsov 1976; Al-Eryani et al. 2016). The species is a known vector of Chittoor virus, an Indian variant of Batai virus ( Smith 1973). Also, the co-transmission of Plasmodium and Wuchereria bancrofti is reported for this species ( Manguin et al. 2010).

Figures

FIGURE 6. Anopheles culicifacies s.l., female (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, photo by David Pecor, Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit).