As Pests. General Description
PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS VOL. 38 May 18, 1923 No. 20 GUIDE TO MOSQUITO IDENTIFICATION FOR FIELD WORKERS ENGAGED IN MALARIA CONTROL IN THE UNITED STATES. By W. H. W. Komp, Assistant Sanitary Engineer, United States Public Health Servicc. Successful control of malaria by antimosquito measures is based upon a knowledge of the species concerned in malaria transmission. Recent malaria-control work undertaken by cooperating health agencies in urban communities in the southern United States has shown the necessity for controlling both nonmalaria-carrying and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, because the public frequently judges the success of malaria-control measures by the amount of reduction of the mosquito nuisance. This guide will discuss only those species which carry malaria in the United States, or which, while not carriers of infection, are sufficiently common in malarious regions to be known as pests. General Description. Mosquitoes belong to the order Diptera of the insects, the true flies, which have only two wings. The body of the mosquito is divided into three parts-head, thorax, and abdomen. The head is almost entirely composed of large compound eyes, and bears also the feelucr or antenne, and two appendages at the base of the feelers,- known as the palpi, and a long, prominent proboscis, or beak. The thorax bears the two wings and six legs, and two small appendages near the base of the wings, short knobbed stalks, known as halteres, character- istic of the true flies. The abdomen, composed of ten segments, bears no appendages except the inconspicuous sexual apparatus at the tip. Mosquitoes may be distinguished from all other two-winged insects by the possession of scales along the wing veins, a fringe of scales along the hind margin of the wings, together with the prominent proboscis or beak, which projects from the head.
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