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Name-bearing Type

• Edwards
• 1930a:302
• Type Species: Culex argyropus (Walker)

Classification

• Subfamily Culicinae, tribe Sabethini. Genus Maorigoeldia includes a single species, Mg. argyropus.

Distribution

• Maorigoeldia argyropus is endemic in New Zealand.
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Phylogeny

• Maorigoeldia exhibits many peculiar characteristics that led Belkin (1962) to regard it as the most primitive sabethine. Whereas this view was contradicted in the cladistic analysis of Judd (1996), which placed Maorigoeldia as the sister to the New World genera of Sabethini, it was corroborated in the cladistic analysis of mosquito genera conducted by Harbach & Kitching (1998), which recovered Maorigoeldia as the most basal clade of the tribe.

Characteristics

• The adults of Mg. argyropus are large, beautiful mosquitoes with light bluish and silver scales. They are unique among sabethines in having well-developed acrostichal setae. Larvae are distinguished from other Old World genera by the presence of a single pair of seta 4-X (distinction from non-sabethines), a circular occipital foramen (distinction from Malaya and Topomyia), seta 13-P (distinction from Kimia, Malaya and Topomyia) and comb scales in more than a single row (distinction from Kimia and Tripteroides). See Sabethini.

Bionomics

• Larvae of Mg. argyropus are found in tree-holes and various artificial containers near forests. They were collected once in a pool with leaves in the bed of a drying stream. The larvae rest on the bottom of the cavity with the dorsal surface down and seldom come to the surface to obtain air. Females have been observed resting on the trunks of trees and approaching humans without landing or biting.

Medical

• Maorigoeldia argyropus is not a medically or economically important species.

Important References

Belkin, 1962 (taxonomy, New Zealand) Belkin, 1968 (New Zealand) Lee et al., 1988c (New Zealand)

Included Taxa

argyropus (Walker, 1848)

The materials presented in the Classification, Distribution, Phylogeny, Characteristics, Medical, and Important References sections, and links to subgenera, are reproduced with permission of Mosquito Taxonomic Inventory, moderated by Ralph Harbach on behalf of the contributors who retain copyright. For additional information on reuse parameters, please contact Mosquito Taxonomic Inventory. Images and maps, unless otherwise attributed, and links to the literature are provided by the WRBU.