Culex albopictus, Skuse

F. A. Skuse, 1894, The banded mosquito of Bengal, Indian Museum Notes 3 (5), pp. 20-20 : 20

Culex albopictus, Skuse , Sp. nov.

Female. — Length of antennae 1*50 ram.; expanse of wings 2.50 x 0.50 mm.; length of body 3 -3.50 mm.

Black with silvery-white markings. Antennae somewhat shorter than the proboscis, joints of the scapus with silvery scales. Head with silvery-white scales on the front and sides. Proboscis five times the length of the palpi, the latter tipped with silvery scales. Thorax traversed by a line of silvery scales for rather more than its anterior half; pleurae spotted with silvery white; scutellum with minute silvery hairs. Abdomen twice the length of the thorax, the segments bordered with a narrow band of silvery scales, and with lateral silvery spots. Legs: femora with a silvery line beneath and slightly tipped with silvery scales; tarsi, the first two joints in the fore and intermediate legs with a narrow silvery-white ring at the base; broad rings at the base of all the joints of the tarsi in the hind legs, the last joint entirely white. In the hind-legs the tibia about one-third longer than the metatarsus. Wings the length of the abdomen, pellucid, iridescent, the veins clothed with linear black scales. Auxiliary vein joining the cocta at a point a little before the posterior branch of the fifth longitudinal vein; middle cross-vein indistinct, shorter than the posterior cross-vein, situated beyond it scarcely a distance equal to twice the length of the latter; first sub-marginal cell longer and narrower than the second posterior cell, their bases opposite or almost opposite; anterior branch of the fifth longitudinal vein originating about midway between the origin of the second longitudinal vein and the tip of the sixth longitudinal.

Hab. — Bengal.

Type in Australian Museum.

Three specimens received from Mr. E. C. Cotes, who informs me that this insect is a great nuisance in Calcutta. The species is 'allied to C. nostoscriptus, Sk., from New South Wales, and C. bancrofti, Sk. , from Queensland, hut the silvery ornamentation of the thorax in these latter is of an elaborate pattern (Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W., Yol. I l l (Ser. 2), 1838, pp. 1738, 1710).