Culicoides travisi Vargas, 1949

William L. Grogan, Jr., Hribar, Lawrence J., Murphree, C. Steven & Cilek, James E., 2010, New records of biting and predaceous midges from Florida, including species new to the fauna of the United States (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae), Insecta Mundi 2010 (147), pp. 1-59 : 31

Culicoides travisi Vargas

Culicoides simulans Root and Hoffman, 1937: 167 (Maryland; preoccupied by Culicoides simulans Vimmer, 1932 ).

Culicoides travisi Vargas, 1949: 233 (new name for C. simulans Root and Hoffman ); Beck 1952: 104 (Florida records); Hribar and Grogan 2005: 232 (Monroe Co., Florida records) ; Borkent and Grogan 2009: 17 (in Nearctic catalog; distribution) .

Culicoides (Oecacta) travisi: Blanton and Wirth 1979: 159 (Florida records); Wilkening et al. 1985: 522 (Florida records).

Culicoides horneae Foote and Pratt, 1954: 25 (New York).

Discussion. In her study of 30,000 specimens of Culicoides collected in 29 Florida counties from November 1948 to September 1950, Elisabeth Beck (1952) provided the first records of C. travisi in the state in Escambia, Lake and Taylor counties. However, Blanton and Wirth (1979) apparently overlooked Beck’s (1952) records from these three counties when they only noted that “E. Beck (1956) stated that she had taken Culicoides travisi in northern and central Florida counties.” In the same paragraph, Blanton and Wirth continued with “Our records are from 5 counties, all in the panhandle:…”, but inexplicably, they only provided locality data of specimens from Franklin, Jackson, Taylor and Wakulla counties. Furthermore, their Florida map of this species also included locality records in Dixie and Liberty counties. More recently, Hribar and Grogan (2005) provided the first records from Monroe Co.