Culicoides (Selfia) brookmani Wirth

Phillips, Robert A., 2022, Culicoides Latreille and Leptoconops Skuse biting midges of the southwestern United States with emphasis on the Canyonlands of southeastern Utah (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae), Insecta Mundi 2022 (907), pp. 1-214 : 80

Culicoides (Selfia) brookmani Wirth

( Fig. 34 )

Culicoides brookmani Wirth, 1952a: 179 (key; female; male genitalia; fig. male genitalia, female wing, palpus; California).

Culicoides (Selfia) brookmani: Khalaf 1954: 38 (assignment to subgenus Selfia ). Fox 1955: 230 (key and diagnoses of subgenera; species key; taxonomy). Jones and Wirth 1958: 86 (corrections to keys and original description). Atchley 1967: 960 (key; numerical characters; female; male genitalia; fig. female wing, palpus, tibial comb, male genitalia). Atchley 1970: 223 (key; female, male, pupa; 29 fig.). Wirth et al. 1985: 32 (numerical characters; fig. female wing). Breidenbaugh and Mullens 1999a: 859 (egg, larva; fig. egg, larval head, mouthparts, thorax, caudal segment). Phillips 2015: 847 (key).

Diagnosis. ( Tables 14, 15) Brown; wing without pattern of pale spots; three unsclerotized or faintly sclerotized long fingerlike spermathecae; female and male scutella with four setae; hind tarsomeres without apical spines; posterior margin of sternite 9 convex over base of aedeagus, without paired median lobes; basal third of gonocoxite abruptly expanded and bent mesally; gonocoxal apodeme simple, without hooklike process; aedeagus about as long as wide, lateral arms in the form of boomerang-shaped sclerites, apical portion trifurcate with lateral processes shorter than wide; parameres fused, 2–3× wider than long, median process short hemispherical.

Distribution. California, Utah (Grand, Washington counties), Kansas ( Swanson et al. 2018), Arizona, New Mexico, Texas.

Larval ecology. Culicoides brookmani is a primarily warm- to hot-desert-inhabiting species. Atchley (1970) collected pupae from the muddy margins of a small, slow, algae-choked stream at ~ 1320 m elevation in Coconino County in north central Arizona and from an intermittent Sonoran Desert stream in Sycamore Canyon in Santa Cruz County in southern Arizona ; and Breidenbaugh and Mullens (1999a) collected immatures from sandy and silty soil margins of a desert creek having filamentous algae at 300–350 m elevation in Riverside County, California .

Adult behavior. Known hosts are deer, jackrabbit ( Atchley 1970), bighorn sheep ( Ovis canadensis nelsoni ), and domestic rabbit ( Oryctolagus cuniculus ) ( Mullens and Dada 1992a). Mullens and Dada (1992b) reported high parity rates (averaging ~40%) for CO 2 -with-light-trapped females, suggesting a high vector potential. They also reported double activity peaks of March–June and September–October in the Santa Rosa Mountains of Southern California, which, because of the shorter season of the Utah Canyonlands, compares favorably with the double peaks of late May (week 21) and late August (week 34) in the present study.

Life cycle. Laboratory studies by Breidenbaugh and Mullens (1999a) found that a wild-caught C. brookmani female laid 94 eggs that hatched 5 d later, and the larvae fed on bacterial-feeding Pelodera and Panagrellus redivivus nematodes and started pupating 13 d later at 27 °C.

Symbionts. Mullens et al. (1997b) experimented with the potential biocontrol parasitic nematode, Heleidomermis magnapapula in the laboratory and found it readily penetrated but did not develop or emerge from C. brookmani larvae, which continued to develop to adults with no sign of the nematodes.

Remarks. Culicoides brookmani is more closely related to C. moabensis and C. multipunctatus of the Multipunctatus group than to other Selfia species ( Phillips 2015).

Figures

Figures 33–36. 33) Culicoides moabensis female (top) and unidentified brown C. subgenus Selfia female (bottom), lateral habitus (in alcohol). Male genitalia, ventral view focused on aedeagus. 34) C. brookmani, basal arm of paramere (Pa), distal tip of median process of paramere delineated (Pt), basal arm of aedeagus (Aa), tip of median process of aedeagus (At), gonocoxite (Gc), gonostylus (Gs). 35) C. moabensis, median process of paramere (Pmp) (paratype). 36) C. denningi, sternite 9 caudal lobes (S9cl).