Geometric morphometric wing analysis represents a robust tool to identify female mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) in Germany

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Accurate species identification is the prerequisite to assess the relevance of mosquito specimens, but is often hindered by missing or damaged morphological features. The present study analyses the applicability of wing geometric morphometrics as a low-cost and practical alternative to identify native mosquitoes in Germany. Wing pictures were collected for 502 female mosquitoes of five genera and 19 species from 80 sampling sites. The reliable species identification based on interspecific wing geometry of 18 landmarks per specimen was tested. Leave-one-out cross validation revealed an overall accuracy of 99% for the genus and 90% for the species identification. Misidentifications were mainly due to three pairings ofAedesspecies:Aedes annulipesvs.Aedes cantans,Aedes cinereusvs.Aedes rossicusandAedes communisvs.Aedes punctor.Cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene region was sequenced to validate the morphological and morphometric identification. Similar to the results of the morphometric analysis, the same problematic threeAedes-pairs clustered, but most other species could be well separated. Overall, our study underpins that morphometric wing analysis is a robust tool for reliable mosquito identification, which reach the accuracy of COI barcoding.
Funding Information
  • German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (2819105215, 2819104515, 2819104315)
  • Projekt DEAL

This publication has 60 references indexed in Scilit: