Anopheles paludis Theobald, 1900

1928. Anopheles mauritianus var. paludis Edwards

TYPE LOCALITY: Katunga, Sierra Leone .

DESCRIPTION:

Wing length: ±6.0 mm.

Wing (Fig. 7a): Sector, subcostal and preapical pale spots prominent; apical pale fringe spot opposite R 3; pale fringe spot present opposite CuA 2, sometimes faint.

Maxillary palpus: Shaggy, with four pale bands.

Legs (Fig. 7b): Hindleg with apex of tibia narrowly pale; base of hindtarsomere 1 dark, as in An. tenebrosus; hindtarsomeres 3–5 entirely pale.

LARVAL HABITAT: Natural collections of clear water with aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation, such as swamps, ponds, backwaters of streams, springs, ditches and rice fields.

ADULT BIOLOGY: Mainly zoophilic but females feed on humans in some areas. In certain areas of the Congo basin, the species is regularly captured indoors, and females with P. falciparum salivary gland infections as high as 10% have been reported (Gillies & de Meillon 1968; Gillies & Coetzee 1987). In the Bandungu region of the DRC, a 6.2% sporozoite rate was recorded by Karch & Mouchet (1992), but no infections were recorded in the capital of Kinshasa (Karch et al. 1992; Coene 1993). In Cameroon, there are several reports of An. paludis infected with parasites: 0.15% (Gillies & de Meillon 1968), 1.12% (Antonio-Nkondjio et al. 2006), 7.1% (Bigoga et al. 2012), 3.4% (Tabue et al. 2017) and 0.7% (Bamou et al. 2018). In Gabon, Makanga et al. (2017) collected An. paludis in wildlife reserves where one out of 76 females was found infected with ungulate haemosporidian parasites.

DISTRIBUTION: Widespread, mainly in the tropics. The record from an unknown locality in Senegal by Hamon et al. (1956) was not confirmed until a single specimen was collected in Bandafassi, near Kedougou, in southeastern Senegal in 2002 (Ndiath et al. 2011).