Culicoides (Amossovia) oklahomensis Khalaf, 1952

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 : 3-4

Culicoides (Amossovia) oklahomensis Khalaf

Culicoides villosipennis oklahomensis Khalaf, 1952: 355 (Oklahoma; as new subspecies of C. villosipennis Root and Hoffman ).

Culicoides (Oecacta) oklahomensis: Wirth 1965: 129 (in Nearctic catalog).

Culicoides oklahomensis: Wirth et al. 1985: 20 (in Nearctic Wing Atlas).

Culicoides (Amossovia) oklahomensis: Borkent and Grogan 2009: 12 (in Nearctic catalog; distribution).

Discussion. Culicoides oklahomensis has a wing pattern that is very similar to C. arboricola ( Jones and Wirth 1958; Wirth et al. 1985), which is a common, wide-ranging species with which it has often been confused. Both species key to couplet 3 in the key to species in the C. guttipennis group by Wirth and Blanton (1967), but females of C. oklahomensis have a dark brown hind femur and 11–16 mandibular teeth, whereas females of C. arboricola have a pale subapical band on their hind femur and 14–18 mandibular teeth. The male genitalia of C. oklahomensis more closely resembles those of C. villosipennis , however, it can be differentiated from that species by the single pair of subapical hyaline filaments below the sharply pointed tip of the aedeagus ( Khalaf 1952; Wirth and Blanton 1967).

As is the case with most other species in the subgenus Amossovia , C. oklahomensis breeds in tree holes ( Pappas et al. 1991). The feeding habits of C. oklahomensis are unknown, however, at least two other species in the subgenus Amossovia are ornithophilic, C. arboricola ( Blanton and Wirth 1979) and C. beckae ( Garvin and Greiner 2003) . Another closely related species, C. guttipennis (Coquillett) , has been known to feed on humans and other mammals, but has also been found in high numbers in poultry houses ( Wirth and Blanton 1967; Messersmith 1965). In addition, the number of antennal flagella with sensilla coeloconica (sensory pits) is an indicator of species host preferences. Species with a large number of flagella with sensilla coeloconica tend to be primarily ornithophilic, whereas those with few flagella containing these sensilla tend to be primarily mammalophilic ( Jamnback 1965). Because female C. oklahomensis typically possess sensilla coeloconica on flagellomeres 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9–13, it is also likely to be primarily ornithophilic.

Both C. arboricola and C. villosipennis have been found throughout all of central and eastern North America, whereas C. oklahomensis has only been recorded from California to Mississippi, and south to Guatemala ( Borkent and Grogan 2009). However, the ranges of all three species overlap throughout the south-central portion of the United States. We provide the first records of C. oklahomensis from Alabama and Arkansas in the extreme southeastern region of that state.

New State Records. ALABAMA, Clarke Co., Jackson, Fred T. Stimpson Wildlife Management Area , 14 August 2012, 1 male, 1 female ; same data except 12 September 2012, 1 male. ARKANSAS, Chicot Co., Eudora, 14 October 2009, 1 female .