Larval habitats and seasonal abundance of Culicoides biting midges found in association with sheep in northern Sardinia, Italy

Abstract

Abstract. Between January 2005 and December 2006, the larval habitats and seasonal abundances of 21 species of Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) found in association with livestock on a farm in northern Sardinia were studied. Culicoides were collected using two light traps (one placed in a sheep shed and the other near water ponds) and reared from mud collected in and along the margins of a small and a large water pond. The mammalophilic Culicoides imicola Kieffer and Culicoides newsteadi Austen were the most prevalent (>95%) of 20 species in the sheep shed, whereas the ornithophilic Culicoides univittatus Vimmer, Culicoides sahariensis Kieffer, Culicoides festivipennis Kieffer, Culicoides circumscriptus Kieffer and Culicoides cataneii Clastrier were most abundant in the traps set at the ponds (73%) and in 16 species of Culicoides reared from laboratory-maintained mud samples retrieved from three microhabitats (a non-vegetated pond shoreline, 20 cm above a pond shoreline, the shoreline of a secondary, permanently inundated, grasscovered pool). The species reared most abundantly from along the pond shoreline were C. festivipennis, C. circumscriptus and C. sahariensis, whereas those most prevalent at the grassed pool were C. cataneii and C. festivipennis. C. imicola was found to breed preferentially in mud 20 cm above the pond shoreline, whereas C. newsteadi was restricted almost entirely to the grassed pool, which had a high organic matter content. Using the light trap and adult emergence data, the seasonal abundance patterns of the eight species of Culicoides were determined. In general, there was good correspondence between light trap catches and emergence trends. Well-defined emergence peaks indicate four or five generations for C. festivipennis and C. circumscriptus and three generations for C. cataneii , C. newsteadi and Culicoides jumineri Callot & Kremer. The emergence trends for C. imicola and C. sahariensis were unimodal, but, because they stretched over several months, indicated that a number of overlapping generations had occurred. Adults of C. imicola were reared and captured only sporadically in the first half of the year, gradually building to a peak in autumn. Conversely, C. newsteadi was reared throughout the year and displayed three clearly defined peaks (in winter, spring and autumn);

Prevalence of different species of Culicoides in Bangalore rural and urban districts of South India

“…Whereas males are not blood feeders and usually die after mating. Similar, sex wise prevalence pattern were also reported by Satheesha et al (2006), Reddy and Hafeez (2008), Deniz et al (2010), Foxi and Delrio (2010) and Kim et al (2012). During this study, 10 different Culicoides spp.…”

Orientation behaviour of Culicoides obsoletus (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae), a relevant virus vector in northern Europe, toward host-associated odorant cues

“…Most species of the genus Culicoides are known to be either mammalophilic (Hair and Turner, 1968;Foxi and Delrio, 2010;Garros et al, 2011;Calvo et al, 2012) or ornithophilic (Bennett, 1960;Hair and Turner, 1968;Garvin and Greiner, 2003;Mullens et al, 2006; Martinez-de la Puente et al, 2009;Votypka et al, 2009;Foxi and Delrio, 2010;Cerny et al, 2011), although some feed on reptiles or frogs. In a previous study using animal-baited traps, horses were found to be the most attractive hosts for the three main Palaearctic Culicoides species, including C. obsoletus (Viennet et al, 2013).…”

Comparison of single- and multi-scale models for the prediction of the Culicoides biting midge distribution in Germany

“…Furthermore, Culicoides abundance was found to decrease with increasing distance to potential hosts or breeding sites (Kettle, 1995;Lühken and Kiel, 2012;Kirkeby et al, 2013a). Moreover, it has been proposed that the direct surroundings of farms provide a huge number of potential breeding sites (Zimmer et al, 2008(Zimmer et al, , 2014Foxi and Delrio, 2010;González et al, 2013).…”

“…Although several studies have increased our knowledge on the breeding sites and their colonisation by different Culicoides species (Foxi and Delrio, 2010;González et al, 2013;Harrup et al, 2013;Zimmer et al, 2014), the causal connections with environmental parameters mostly remain unknown. Therefore, besides the evaluation of different modelling techniques and the implementation of further environmental parameters, there is an urgent need for experimental studies on these relationships.…”