Culex (Culex) habilitator Dyar en Knab, 1906

Cooper, David, Yamaguchi, Nobuyuki, Macdonald, David, Nanova, Olga, Yudin, Viktor, Dugmore, Andrew & Kitchener, Andrew, 2020, Taxonomy, ecology and distribution of the mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) of the Dutch Leeward Islands, with a key to the adults and fourth instar larvae, Contributions to Zoology 89 (1), pp. 373-392 : 382

Culex (Culex) habilitator Dyar en Knab, 1906

Although Van der Kuyp (1948, 1949, 1954) reported Cx. habilitator from land crab holes on Sint Maarten (Rolandus Channel and Lower Princess Quarter) often together with De. magnus , we did not find any. The identification of this species is problematic as adults look very similar to Cx. bahamensis , whereas the larvae resemble Cx. nigripalpus . Despite the fact that Van der Kuyp collected both larvae and adults, and therefore identification should be easy, his description of the larvae does not agree with diagnostic characters described by Bram (1967). The larvae of Van der Kuyp have “anal gills, about as long as the segment, with blunt tips” and are pictured with a double apical tuft on the siphon; the gills should be short, pointed, and the tuft should be triple.This suggests that the larvae actually fit the description of Cx. nigripalpus , a species that is sometimes found in crab holes as well ( Belkin et al., 1970). Van der Kuyp’s adults do however resemble the few available descriptions of Cx. habilitator ( Dyar, 1928; Lane, 1953 [erroneously noted as “habilitador” [sic]]; Bram, 1967). The fact that Cx. habilitator is present on many of the Lesser Antillean islands (Belkin&Heinemann, 1975, 1976; Schaffner, 2003) suggests that this species may be present on the Dutch Leeward Islands too. To determine whether Van der Kuyp’s records really represent this species, a reanalysis of the original material stored in the Smithsonian Institution is needed (National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., USA – NMNH) .