Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus, 1762)

Rogers, D. Christopher & Cruz-Rivera, Edwin, 2021, A preliminary survey of the inland aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, Journal of Natural History 55 (13 - 14), pp. 799-850 : 831

Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus in Hasselquist, 1762)

Native to Africa, it is believed this species originally came to the Americas with the slave trade, breeding in the water barrels on the slave ships ( Curran 1928). Aedes aegypti breeds in tree holes, bromeliad tanks, roof gutters, water tanks, cisterns, and any artificial container that holds water long enough for the life cycle to be completed ( Powell and Tabachnick 2013). Belkin et al. (1970) reported larvae from flower vases in homes in Jamaica. This species is a day flying mosquito and is the primary vector of Zika, chikungunya, dengue, and other human viral diseases in various countries ( Plourde and Bloch 2016; Souza-Neto et al. 2019). We found this species commonly on St. Thomas. Adults were collected in forests all over the island, and larvae were collected in stagnant water from recycle bins on the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas campus, from buckets at an abandoned apartment in East Altona, and in both wild and ornamental bromeliad phytotelmata, native and introduced ( Aechmea sp. , Neoregelia sp. , Alcantarea sp. ). Previous records from the Virgin Islands come from Flemings and Walsh (1966), Stone (1969) (“Virgin Belkin et al. (1965), Belkin et al. 1970) (‘Virgin Islands’, St. Croix), and Kenney et al. (2017) (St. Thomas).