Female mosquito - Aedes epactius

Moved

… Tyler Hedlund, 25 June, 2021 - 2:59pm

Aedes epactius

Subgenus Georgecragius males have narrow, unfeathered palps like these males. Note how the females have tapered abdomen; cerci are excerted (stick out at end of abdomen), but mostly covered so hard to see

The tarsi bands are basal and apical and the wings are entirely dark-scaled except for a few white scales at the base of vein C. This narrows the ID down to Aedes epactius and monticola, the latter of which has white ends to the palps on the female and pale scales ventrally on the proboscis.

I have requested to add a page for this species:
https://bugguide.net/node/view/1881727

Note the conflict with the current accepted mosquito taxonomy and BugGuide's outdated taxonomy schematic. I just noticed there is another request to add a guide page for this species here:

https://bugguide.net/node/view/1877951

Hope this helps!

By the way, these photos would be a great addition to iNaturalist's database. Not much publicly-accessible data exist for the distribution of this species. That goes for many mosquito species in the southwest, so I encourage you to share as many mosquitoes as you can, if you are willing!

… Liam Wolff, 29 August, 2020 - 12:12pm

Mosquitoes are hard!

I could have sworn, in a court of law, that these skitters had a blunt ending of their abdomen! Thanks for specialists like you who can shine a bright light on the path.
Thank you, and James Mann, for recently requesting the species page. I hope you can become a Contributing Editor soon and fix the outdated nomenclature that you have mentioned in the forums.
A while ago, I posted 26 photos of several bugs on iNaturalist and not even one has been touched. That site has a great format and excellent features, but if no attention is given to one's posts, then what's the point? I will upload these images as you suggested though.
Thank you again for your expert help.

… Salvador Vitanza, 29 August, 2020 - 12:39pm

Happy to help!

Mosquitoes are indeed hard and I am still learning every day! Fortunately, there is literature out there to help folks like me and you learn about their identification (probably due to their significance to human health!), which is more than can be said about most arthropod taxa. That's likely the reason none of your iNaturalist bug observations have been reviewed. However, great photos of adult mosquitoes like this will not go unnoticed! I'm on there everyday trying to identify mosquitoes.

If you would like identification keys, I can email you a few I think might be useful.

I'm not too familiar with larvae identification because not many folks upload pictures of the right parts of the organism for identification, but if you are able to, I'll try to take a look.

… Liam Wolff, 29 August, 2020 - 12:51pm

Yes, please send me as many keys as you can

With one caveat: I find it difficult to focus on a specific group of bugs as I am in permanent awe with the whole bunch.

… Salvador Vitanza, 29 August, 2020 - 1:08pm