Aedes (Ochlerotatus) lasaensis (Meng)

Harbach, Ralph E. & Wilkerson, Richard C., 2023, The insupportable validity of mosquito subspecies (Diptera: Culicidae) and their exclusion from culicid classification, Zootaxa 5303 (1), pp. 1-184 : 38-39

Aedes (Ochlerotatus) lasaensis (Meng)

subspecies gyirongensis Ma, 1982 —original combination: Aedes (Ochlerotatus) lasaensis gyirongensis . Distribution: China (Xizang Autonomous Region) ( Ma 1982).

subspecies lasaensis Meng, 1962 —original combination: Aedes (Ochlerotatus) lasaensis . Distribution: China (Xizang Autonomous Region) ( Meng 1962).

Aedes lasaensis and subspecies gyirongensis were described from localities in the Xizang Autonomous Region (Tibet) of China. The former was described from males and females reared from larvae taken from a “marsh in the vicinity of Lasa [Lhasa]”; the latter was described from males and females collected in Gyirong , which is a county bordering Nepal ( Gyirong is also the name of a town in the country). Both localities lie within the Himalayas , Lhasa at an altitude of 3,656 m and Gyirong town at an altitude of 2,700 m. Gyirong town lies approximately 585 km west-southwest of Lhasa city.

Meng (1962) described the adults and fourth-instar larva of Ae. lasaensis and distinguished the species from Ae. punctor ( Kirby, 1837) . Ma (1982) briefly described the adults of subspecies gyirongensis and illustrated the male genitalia. Since the original descriptions, the two forms have only been treated by Lu et al. (1997), who described the adults of the two forms and the larva of lasaensis (the larva of gyirongensis remains unknown). Lu et al. provided illustrations of the male genitalia and larva (head, thorax and terminal abdominal segments) of lasaensis and reproduced Ma’s illustrations (slightly modified) of the ninth tergal lobes and gonocoxite of gyirongensis . The morphological distinctions provided in the descriptions and illustrations of these authors are summarized in Table 2 .

Aedes lasaensis is a member of the Punctor Subgroup (Knight 1951) of the Communis Group ( Edwards 1932a) of species within the subgenus Ochlerotatus . In contrast with some other species of the Punctor Subgroup in which the male genitalia are indistinguishable, e.g. Ae. aboriginis Dyar, 1917a, Ae. hexodontus Dyar, 1916 and Ae. punctor in Canada ( Wood et al. 1979), the distinguishing features of the male genitalia listed in Table 2 , especially those of the gonocoxite and shape of the claspette stem, clearly indicate that lasaensis and gyirongensis are separate species, which are likely to occur in sympatry in areas of Tibet. We expect that morphological details of the larval stage, once known for both forms, in concert with DNA sequence data, will verify our decision here to formally recognize gyirongensis as a distinct species: Aedes (Ochlerotatus) gyirongensis Ma, 1982 . Aedes gyirongensis is currently listed as a species in the Encyclopedia of Life.