Culicoides (Drymodesmyia) butleri Wirth and Hubert

Vigil, Wlodkowski, John C., Joshua, Vargas, Shaw, David, Christopher, William L. Grogan, Jr. & Corn, Joseph L., 2014, New records of biting midges of the genus Culicoides Latreille from the southeastern United States (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae), Insecta Mundi 2014 (394), pp. 1-14 : 6

Culicoides (Drymodesmyia) butleri Wirth and Hubert

Culicoides (Oecacta) butleri Wirth and Hubert, 1960: 650 (Arizona; in review of Ceratopogonidae reared from cacti); Wirth 1965: 130 (in Nearctic catalog; distribution).

Culicoides (Drymodesmyia) butleri: Wirth et al. 1985: 14 (in Nearctic Wing Atlas); Borkent and Grogan 2009: 14 (in Nearctic catalog; distribution).

Discussion. Culicoides butleri is a cactus-breeding species that has a similar wing pattern to several other closely related species in the subgenus Drymodesmyia , including C. jamaicensis Edwards , C. sitiens Wirth and Hubert , and C. jonesi Wirth and Hubert. However , it can be differentiated from those species by its distinctive, elongate, sac-like spermathecae. The related C. (Drymodesmyia) loughnani Edwards that was originally described from Jamaica, but is also known from Bahamas and Cuba, Texas and Mexico, as well as Florida and Georgia ( Wirth and Blanton 1974; Borkent and Grogan 2009), also has elongate, sac-like spermathecae, but its wing pattern is greatly reduced and much paler. In addition, C. butleri has a more restricted range than C. loughnani , and has only been previously recorded from Arizona and extreme northeastern Mexico in Nuevo Leon ( Borkent and Grogan 2009). The host preferences of C. butleri are unknown, but, because all 13 flagellomeres possess sensilla coeloconica, this suggests that it feeds on birds. We provide the first record of C. butleri from Texas.

New State Record. TEXAS, Uvalde Co., Uvalde, 4 May 2010, 1 female.