Mosquitoes of Virginia

The following excerpt is from The Mosquitoes of the Mid-Atlantic Region: An Identification Guide by Bruce A. Harrison, Brian D. Byrd, Charles B. Sither, and Parker B. Witt (2016)

Virginia has a long history of published lists documenting mosquito species in the state (Dyar 1928, Dorer et al. 1944, Bickley 1957, Gladney and Turner 1969, Harrison et al. 2002). Currently this state has confirmed records for 56 named taxa, including one hybrid and one unidentified provisional species entry in the An. crucians complex. That entry, An. crucians s.l. is counted because we are unaware of any molecular attempts to analyze the species in this complex in Virginia, but specimens of this complex have been collected and identified in VA. We are changing the VA listing of Cx. quinquefasciatus to the hybrid, Cx. pipiens x Cx. quinquefasciatus, because the most northern confirmed record of Cx. quinquefasciatus along the Atlantic Coast is a site in the most southeastern county in North Carolina (Fonseca, unpublished). Actually we also consider most of the specimens of Cx. pipiens reported in Virginia to be Cx. pipiens x Cx. quinquefasciatus hybrids. However, since true Cx. pipiens may occur in extreme northern and northwestern VA, but need molecular confirmation, we have included Cx. pipiens in the list of nominal species in VA. The numbers reported here increase the number (55) reported in Harrison et al. (2002) to 56, because Cx. tarsalis was inadvertently left out of that list (David Gaines, personal communication).

Since the publication of this book, two more species have been found in the state of Virginia, Culex coronator (Akaratovic and Kiser 2017) and Culex nigripalpus (Akaratovic et al. 2021). This increases the number of species in the state to 58. The list below includes these two additions. Links are provided to the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit (WRBU) and to supporting literature in the state/surrounding areas, when available. If you know of other literature or have high resolution photographs of any of the following species and would like to see them added to the website, please email Website Chair, Karen Akaratovic (kakaratovic@suffolkva.us).