Aedes (Ochlerotatus) caspius (Pallas, 1771)

Khalin, A. V. & Aibulatov, S. V., 2021, Northernmost records of mosquito species (Diptera: Culicidae) in northwestern Russia, Zoosystematica Rossica (Zoosyst. Rossica) 30 (1), pp. 46-63 : 52

Aedes (Ochlerotatus) caspius (Pallas, 1771) *

Northernmost records ( Fig. 2e ). 59°56 ′ 20.74 ″ N, 30°18 ′ 57.12 ″ E, SPb * ( Osten-Sacken, 1858) ; 56°12 ′ 0.69 ″ N, 28°41 ′ 50.19 ″ E, PP, Sebezh Distr. , Anninskoe * ( Medvedev & Matov, 1999) .

Distribution. NWR: PP*, SPb*. Adjacent countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus. Europe (ranging northward to the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark), European Russia (central and southern), South Siberia. West and Central Asia, China, India, North and East Africa.

Note. Aedes caspius is known within NWR only from two localities in St Petersburg and the Pskov Province, but it has been recorded in Fennoscandia and the Baltic region ( Culverwell, 2018; Robert et al., 2019; Culverwell et al., 2021). This species is close to Ae. dorsalis , from which it differs in the coloration of the scutum and abdomen. No reliable characters were found to distinguish Ae. caspius and Ae. dorsalis based on the male genitalia or larval morphology. Since Ae. caspius is distributed in Finland and Estonia, it may be also present in the Leningrad Province. However, only Ae. dorsalis has been found so far in the latter region, including our own collections in the Kurgal’skiy Peninsula, near the border with Estonia. The difficult diagnostics of Ae. caspius and Ae. dorsalis may lead to misidentifications. Moreover, the range of Ae. caspius mainly lies to the west and south of NWR. Most likely, the specimens recorded from St Petersburg and the Pskov Province as Ae. caspius are actually Ae. dorsalis .

Figures

Fig. 2. Northernmost records of Anopheles and Aedes spp. Doubtful records are marked with an asterisk (*).