Culex ventrilloni, F. W. Edwards, 1920

F. W. Edwards, 1920, Bulletin of Entomological Research, Bulletin of Entomological Research 11 (2), pp. 133-138 : 5-6

Culex ventrilloni , sp. n.

. Read scales narrow, blackish; a rim round the eyes and a longitudinal band • down the middle pale golden. Proboscis with a distinct yellow median ring, broader below than above. Palpi one-fourth as long as the proboscis, black, with some white scales about the middle. Thorax blackish brown, bristles dark. Prothoracic lobes with a few narrow golden scales; mesonotum with golden and dark brown scales, the former occurring in an indefinite line in the middle and in some large rather irregular patches on each side on the front half. Scutelhim pale, with narrow pale golden scales. Pleurae with four or five small patches of pale ochreous flat scales. Abdomen dark brown, tergites with white basal lateral patches and ochreous basal bands, which are broadest in the middle; sternites with dark apical bands. Legs black; all the femora black to the base above, ochreous beneath on the basal half. Femora and tibiae all with conspicuous whitish tips, no scattered pale scales. Tarsal joints conspicuously ringed with ochreous at the base only; the rings on the last two joints very narrow. Claws simple; empodia large, nearly as long as the claws. Wings with brown scales, those in the lateral series linear. First fork-cell more than twice as long as its stem, its base nearer the base of the wing than that of the second. Cross-veins separated by rather more than the length of the posterior.

Length, 6 mm.

MADAGASCAR: Tananarive, 1904, 1? (Dr. Neiret) and 1905, 2 $ (Dr. VentriUon).

Type in the Paris Museum; paratype in the British Museum.

This species is noteworthy for the ornamentation of the head, the basally ringed tarsal joints, and the large empodia. It has no near ally among the described African and Oriental species, and in the absence of the male it is impossible to say in what subgenus it should be placed. Possibly it may be a Lutzia.