Culicoides Palmerae

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 : 106

Culicoides Palmerae group species C

(Fig. 222, 253, 254, 278)

Diagnosis. ( Tables 14, 15) Wing pattern extensive; r 2 dark; distal pale spots in r 3, m 1, m 2 small; eight mandibular teeth; scutellum yellowish brown, lighter than the brown scutum; fore tarsomeres with apical spines, hind tarsomeres without; spermathecae unequal by ~1.1, necks shorter than wide.

Distribution. One female was collected with a CO 2 -baited trap on 25 June 1999 in west Moab at 38.57239°N 109.56754°W and 1217 m elevation in Grand County, Utah.

Adult behavior. The mandibular and lacinial teeth on the female indicate it feeds on vertebrate blood; however, its hosts are unknown.

Remarks. The specimen is similar to C. calexicanus except for being smaller, having only eight mandibular teeth, and having smaller distal wing spots. Thus, it may be a C. calexicanus variant and is not being recognized as a new species at this time.

Subgenus unplaced, Piliferus group

The large and diverse Piliferus group is readily distinguished from all other Culicoides known from the southwestern United States by the males having the combination of broadly bifurcate footlike ventral gonocoxal apodemes, simple Y-shaped aedeagi, and parameres without submedian lobes but with a subapical fringe of spines. However, the females as a group are not so sharply defined because they only usually have pale spots straddling the midportions of M 1 and M 2, unequal spermathecae, and basic odd-numbered SCo patterns.

It is perhaps the most difficult group of Culicoides in the western United States to reliably identify to species. Their male genitalia offer only a few somewhat variable characters; and wing and SCo patterns and quantitative characters vary enough among the females to overlap more than what Table 14 suggests with its listed average values. Furthermore, descriptive literature for four of the five species that are known to occur west of the Continental Divide has been limited to only one species at a time in widely separate geographic locations: California for C. cavaticus and C. lophortygis , Maryland and Alabama for C. chewaclae , and New Mexico and Arizona for C. doeringae . The other, C. unicolor , was described from California in 1905 and is now considered a composite of four species.

Culicoides unicolor sensu stricto has never been differentially redescribed since its original description, despite the more recent descriptions of its currently recognized sisters, C. cavaticus (1956) and the eastern species, Culicoides denticulatus Wirth and Hubert (1962) and Culicoides franclemonti Cochrane (1974) (see C. unicolor remarks). Furthermore, two western species ( C. doeringae and C. lophortygis ) are similar enough to call into question their distinction (see C. doeringae remarks); and at least six species known from the western United States are undescribed: species 10, 25, 58, 73, 76 (Wayne Kramer, personal communication), and species B herein.