Species Culex (Culex) tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901

Museums

Regional Maps

• Culex (Culex) tritaeniorhynchus Giles, G.M. 1901. A plea for the collective investigation of Indian Culicidae, with suggestions as to moot points for enquiry, and a prodromus of species known to the author. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 13: 592-610 [606].

 

Introduction

Culex (Culex) tritaeniorhynchus is an important mosquito vector of Japanese encephalitis virus that affects feral pigs, native mammals and humans. The species was detected in Australia by Lessard et al. (2021) from the Darwin and Katherine regions of the Northern Territory and is assumed to be established in the country given the wide geographical spread. It is expected to have been introduced by wind dispersal of adults or via transportation of aircraft or shipping vessels from Timor-Leste, since COI barcoding showed that the Australian population shared 99.7% nucleotide identity with a specimen collected from Dili, Timor-Leste.

A key to adult females of the Culex Vishnui subgroup and related species from the Northern Territory was provided by Lessard et al. (2021).

 

Distribution

States

Northern Territory

Extra Distribution Information

Introduced from Timor-Leste.

IBRA and IMCRA regions

IBRA

NT: Darwin Coastal (DAC), Pine Creek (PCK)

General References

Lessard, B.D., Kurucz, N., Rodriguez, J., Carter, J. & Hardy, C.M. 2021. Detection of the Japanese encephalitis vector mosquito Culex tritaeniorhynchus in Australia using molecular diagnostics and morphology. Parasites & Vectors 14(411): 1-11

 

History of changes

Published	As part of group	Action Date	Action Type	Compiler(s)
	Culex Linnaeus, 1758	25-Aug-2021	ADDED	Dr Bryan Lessard (ABRS)