Page 17 - Volume 7, Issue 1, January 2014

1

Laboratory of Agricultural Zoology and Entomolo-

gy, Agricultural University of Athens, 75 Iera Odos Str.,

GR-118 55 Athens, Greece

Corresponding author:

ilytra@hotmail.com

Hellenic Plant Protection Journal

7:

15-18, 2014

SHORT COMMUNICATION

Presence of

Culex tritaeniorhynchus

(Diptera: Culicidae) in rice

fields of Western Greece

I.Ch. Lytra

1

and N.G. Emmanouel

1

Summary

The presence of the mosquito

Culex tritaeniorhynchus

was recorded in large numbers in rice

in Western Greece for 6 consecutive years (2008-2013). As only few specimens were previously collect-

ed in Attica in 2003 and the mosquito is a potential vector of pathogens which cause human diseases,

the importance of this species for the emergence of these diseases in Europe is discussed.

Themosquitospecies

Culextritaeniorhynchus

Giles is part of the

Culex vishnui

subgroup,

which also includes

Culex pseudovishnui

Col-

less and

Cx. vishnui

Theobald (Toma

et al

.,

2000). It is widely distributed throughout

the Oriental region extending into the Mid-

dle East, the Mediterranean and Afrotropical

region, China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Microne-

sia and Indonesia (Lee

et al

., 1989). It has also

been recorded in Angola, Cameroon, Cen-

tral African Republic, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia,

Ghana, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya,

Lebanon, Maldives Islands, Mozambique, Ni-

geria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Syria,

Tanzania, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan (Walter

Reed Biosystematics Unit). In Europe,

Cx. tri-

taeniorhynchus

has been reported in Albania

(Danielová and Adhami, 1960; Adhami, 1987;

Samanidou and Harbach, 2003) and it was

first recorded in Greece in 2003 from samples

which were taken from a coastal marsh in the

area of Marathon, Prefecture of Attica (Fig. 1)

(Samanidou and Harbach, 2003).

This is the first record of

Cx. tritaenio-

rhynchus

in agricultural land in Greece and

the second reference in the country. More-

over, it is the first time that large numbers

of this mosquito species are recorded in

Greece for 6 consecutive years (2008-2013)

as the previous report concerns only a few

specimens (Samanidou and Harbach, 2003).

Specimens of

Cx. tritaeniorhynchus

were

obtained through samplings which were

conducted at an organic irrigated rice field

for a research study on the mosquito fauna

throughout the growing season. The size of

the sampling field was approximately 8 ha.

The rice field was located in a rural area close

to the Delta of Acheloos river (38

o

20’20”N,

21

o

15’06”E) in the Prefecture of Aitoloakar-

nania, Western Greece, where a total of

1,500 ha of rice fields exist (Fig. 1). The sam-

plings were performed every 10 days during

the rice cultivation period (between June

and September) in the years 2009, 2010 and

2011, whereas they were conducted month-

ly during the same period in 2008, 2012 and

2013.

Twenty samples of larvae and pupae

were taken using a standard larval dipper

(350 ml, 13 cm diameter) with an elongated

handle (BioQuip, Rancho Dominguez, CA).

The samples were transferred to the labo-

ratory in the Agricultural University of Ath-

ens, where mosquito larvae and pupae were

counted and reared to adults in a rearing

room at 25-26

o

C. Adults were collected ev-

ery day, killed in killing boxes using ethyl ac-

etate and pinned on paper points. The mos-

quitoes were then identified to species by

the authors using taxonomic keys (DuBose