Brief Information

Stinging Margins family has more than fifty species, including four species: Austroconops Leptoconops، Culicoide Forcipomyia, which are considered medically important as they stuck the blood of man, farm animals and some birds. There are other species of stinging margins, which do not stuck blood, but survive on predating small insects, and some species feed on the blood of large insects.

General Features

Adult Insects are distinguished with their dark color (Brown or Black), thread antenna, which is longer than the chest, and in males it has thick hair; the mouth parts are short dangling from the head, and relatively wide, short wings with little veins and no telangiectasia and scales on them. Usually, wings have specific spots of black color alternating with white ones as in Culicoides, or being white as milk in contrast with the black body as in Leptoconops. Intersectional wings are, on the body as scissors, in rest time. Adult insects spread in a range half km away from the breeding place, however, the wind may take Margins away for several kilometers.

Life Cycle

The life cycle of the most common species which is Culicoides, where the eggs are brown and similar to bananas; they are laid in several humid habitats such as rotten plants, tree holes, the remains of cut banana stalks, or animal dung, swamps, fresh and salt water mud, and eggs are also laid in the sands of the sea coasts. The eggs hatch after 2-9 days and produce cylindrical, small, legless larvae, characterized by the presence of a pair of four nipples on the last abdominal ring. Larvae feed on decaying plants; they have four phases in their lifetime, and remain 2-3 weeks as larvae in hot regions, but in cold regions, they spend winter as larvae; that may last for seven months. Pupae usually exist in dry places in the breeding environment; they are distinguished with two tubes for breathing; each is divided to two rings. There are scoli ended by micro capillaries in the abdomen of the pupa; this phase takes 3-10 days to become an adult insect.