Psorophora (Grabhamia) pygmaea (Theobald, 1903)

Cooper, David, Yamaguchi, Nobuyuki, Macdonald, David, Nanova, Olga, Yudin, Viktor, Dugmore, Andrew & Kitchener, Andrew, 2020, Taxonomy, ecology and distribution of the mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) of the Dutch Leeward Islands, with a key to the adults and fourth instar larvae, Contributions to Zoology 89 (1), pp. 373-392 : 384

Psorophora (Grabhamia) pygmaea (Theobald, 1903)

Van der Kuyp (1953, 1954) recorded Ps. pygmaea from the Rolandus Channel on Sint Maarten. During the 2018 survey, this species was not observed at this location, but was found in shallow ponds on a flooded lawn in the Belvedere district, but only during the rainy season. The species is known to require recently flooded plains for their eggs to hatch ( Belkin et al., 1970), which explains why they were not observed during the dry season. Sint Maarten has lowlands with poorly drained mineral soils, in strong contrast with the soils of Sint Eustatius and Saba which consist of better drained sandy-loam and are more steep ( Veenenbos, 1955). This makes it unlikely that rainwater pools form long enough for the larvae of Ps. pygmaea to develop on Sint Eustatius and Saba.