A picture shows the spread of Mosquitos around the world

Brief Information

Medically, mosquitos are at the top of all blood sucking arthropods, in addition to the inconvenience and anxiety they cause to human comfort because of their painful tingling and blood sucking. Some mosquitoes are known as the sole vectors of serious diseases like Malaria, Yellow fever, Dengue fever, and Elphantiasis. There are around 3400 kinds of mosquitos spreading all over the world, except the South Pole. Mosquitos can live in different climates like the tropical hot regions, cold regions, and highlands like mountain tops or beneath the earth surface in wells and mines. Mosquitos belong to Culicidae and are divided into three species as follows:
Toxorhynchitinae:
Their insects are not medically significant as they do not feed on blood but suck the nectar of flowers and plants. Their larvae are predators, and include around 60 kinds, such as Toxorhynchites rutilus.
Anophelinae:
Their insects stuck blood, and include around 430 kinds belomging to three species; Chagasia, Bironella, and Anopheles; the latter are the most important as they include more than 400 kinds.
Culicinae:
Their insects stuck blood; they include around 2908 kinds, and they are one of the most famous of Mosquito species.

General Features

Mosquitos are small, cylindrical, delicate insects. They are 3-6 mm long, with long legs and two wings, distinguished from other two-winged insects by their elongated mouth or proboscis and the scales on the veins and edges of the wings. Female mouth parts are penetrative and sucking, while male mouth parts are sucking only. The antenna is long and consists of 15 rings; it has thick feathers in the male and sparse feathers in the female. Mosquitos’ legs are cylindrical, covered with dark and light scales that end with a pair of claws. The abdomen is long and cylindrical, consisting of ten rings, and the first eight rings bear on either side a pair of respiratory stomata. Larva’s body is composed of three parts: head, chest, and abdomen. The head is inflated and its width may be greater than its length as in Culicinae larvae, or vice versa as in Anophelinae larvae. The chest consists of three rings, with fixed, systematic and ordinary bristles. Culicinae‘s bristles are distinguished with being simple, but in Anophelinae they are branched feather. The abdomen has an appendix in the eighth ring, which is called a siphon in Culicinae, and does not exist in Anophelinae. Chrysalis is similar to the letter W, where the head and chest are jointed. The abdomen consists of nine rings ending with a pair of oars that help the Chrysalis swim actively in water.

life cycle

The life cycle of a mosquito is complete, meaning that it has four distinct stages: the egg, then the larva, then the pupa, and then the adult insect. The first three stages live in water, and small amounts of fresh water or rain water that collect in small vessels or those that are present in them suffice for their reproduction. In swimming pools and water tanks in homes, or discarded plastic, metal or glass containers that are found in exposed targets, in tree cavities, or in the remains of irrigation water. While we find that the complete insect is the active phase of the bird, whose females feed on the blood of vertebrates, while the males feed on the secretions of plants (nectar, etc.).