Anopheles pseudopunctipennis, Theobald, 1901

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 : 62

Anopheles pseudopunctipennis sensu lato in western Chile

Mann (1950) described two subspecies from the Tarapacá Region of Chile, An. pseudopunctipennis neghmei and An. pseudopunctipennis noei from La Quebrada de Miñimiñe and Oasis de Suca, respectively.The two sites are only about 2.5 km apart but they are “perfectamente aislados por fajas de desierto absoluto”, absolutely and completely isolated by desert. The projections of the median plate of the spiracular apparatus are much shorter in the two subspecies than in the nominotypical subspecies. They have very different eggs from each other and An. pseudopunctipennis sensu lato (a key is given to eggs of related species), and neghmei is described as distinctly more melanistic than noei . Ecological studies were carried out by Mann with the intention of future publication, of which we can find no record. However, there is reference ( Anonymous 1950) to a fire that destroyed the School of Medicine and the Department of Parasitology of the University of Chile in 1949, which might explain why the information was not published. However, a brief result of that unpublished study is given in his description. Mann (1950) described rearing many individuals of the two subspecies in each other’s habitats to see if environment affected their morphological characters, which to him was an alternative explanation for their differences [phenotype affected by environment]. He reported that characters for each remained true no matter where they were raised. It is an intriguing question if hybrids or introgression occurred because of this manipulation. Because of distance and morphological differences from the nominotypical subspecies, and striking egg and color differences between these two subspecies, we elevate both to species status: Anopheles (Anopheles) neghmei Mann, 1950 and Anopheles (Anopheles) noei Mann, 1950 . Anopheles neghmei and An. noei are both currently listed as species in the Encyclopedia of Life.