Culicoides kirbyi Glick and Mullen

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 : 10

Culicoides kirbyi Glick and Mullen

Culicoides kirbyi Glick and Mullen, 1983: 380 (Maryland; Alabama); Wirth et al. 1985: 24 (in Nearctic Wing Atlas; distribution); Borkent and Grogan 2009: 17 (in Nearctic catalog; distribution).

Discussion. Culicoides kirbyi is a relatively recently described and poorly known species, which seems to have a very specific emergence and peak population period. It was described by Glick and Mullen (1983) from specimens collected at two sites, in Lee Co. Alabama and Patuxent Wildlife Refuge, Prince Georges Co., Maryland (type locality). In Alabama, it has only been captured in mid-spring, during the last week of April and first week of May, and from mid- to late May in Maryland. This very narrow emergence period may explain why C. kirbyi is so rarely captured. Glick and Mullen (1983) noted that although its feeding habits were unknown, the fact that it possessed antennal sensilla coeloconica on eight flagellomeres suggested that it is ornithophilic. Glick and Mullen also indicated that C. kirbyi was most similar to the slightly darker C. testudinalis Wirth and Hubert , which has a similar wing with faint pale spots, but, is larger (female wing length 0.89–1.26 mm vs. 0.83–0.94 mm in C. kirbyi ), with a longer proboscis (proboscis/head ratio 0.79 vs. 0.60–0.65 in C. kirbyi ), and a more slender palpal segment 3 (palpal ratio 2.00–2.60 vs. 1.83–1.95 in C. kirbyi ). We provide the first record of C. kirbyi from Mississippi, a female collected during the last week of April in the south-central region of that state.

New State Record. MISSISSIPPI, Marion Co., Columbia, Marion County Wildlife Management Area, 27 April 2009, 1 female.