Culex (Culex) guiarti Blanchard

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 : 85-86

Culex (Culex) guiarti Blanchard

subspecies guiarti Blanchard, 1905 —original combination: Culex guiarti [nomen novum for Culex viridis Theobald, 1903a ]. Distribution: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Republic of South Africa, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda ( Wilkerson et al. 2021, but not Sudan, see Simsaa et al. 2021).

subspecies sudanicus Edwards, 1941 —original combination: Culex guiarti var. sudanicus (subspecific status by Harbach & Howard 2007). Distribution: Ghana, Nigeria ( Wilkerson et al. 2021) .

Culex guiarti sudanicus was originally described and named as a variety that was considered to be morphologically “Intermediate between C. guiarti and C. weschei ” ( Edwards 1941) . It was recognized as a subspecies of Cx. guiarti by Harbach & Howard (2007).

Edwards (1941) noted that sudanicus resembled the nominotypical form in having the proboscis entirely dark-scaled, the abdominal sterna with dark apical bands and the distal half of the midfemur extensively dark-scaled dorsally in posterior view, but exhibited the following differences: Scutal integument uniformly brownish, not paler on the fossae (shoulders), scales nearly entirely pale and coarser; mesokatepisternal scales more numerous, the upper and lower patches almost contiguous; proepisternal scales and setae also more numerous; anterior scales of forecoxa all pale; male genitalia as in the typical form, gonostylus not unusually broad (moderately broad and rather suddenly narrowed apically in the typical form). The larva is known for the typical form ( Hopkins 1952), but it is not known for sudanicus . The typical form has been recorded from many countries in sub-Sharan Africa whereas sudanicus is only recorded from Ghana and Nigeria ( Wilkerson et al. 2021) . Based on the paucity of morphological data and the fact that the typical form has also been recorded from Ghana and Nigeria, we believe that Edwards (1941) was correct in describing sudanicus as a morphological variant of Cx. guiarti . Consequently, it seems prudent to formally recognize sudanicus as a synonymous name: sudanicus Edwards, 1941 , junior subjective synonym of Culex (Culex) guiarti Blanchard, 1905 . “ Culex sudanicus ” should be removed from the list of Culex species included in the Encyclopedia of Life. We retain a second synonym of Culex guiarti , Culex viridis Theobald, 1903a , described from Buse, Uganda.