Species specificity of acoustic signals of malarial mosquitoes of Anopheles maculipennis complex

Authors: Valery P. Perevozkin, Sergey S. Bondarchuk

Acoustic characteristics of three representatives of malaria mosquitoes of Palearctic complex Anopheles maculipennis: An. messeae, An. maculipennis s.s. and An. atroparvus were studied. It was found that the spectra of fundamental frequencies for males of all species is significantly higher than for females. An. atroparvus and An. maculipennis have close acoustic characteristics, which explains the cases of interspecific hybridization of these two species discovered earlier in nature by means of cytogenetic analysis. It was proven, that acoustic spectrum of An. messeae differs from the ones of other species. At the same time, the acoustic spectra of intraspecific groups of An. messeae, selected on the basis of high frequency of some karyotypes in populations have specific differences. Obtained results correlate with analogous research in groups other Culicidae. This makes it possible to consider acoustic communication of malaria mosquitoes as a basic mechanism of specific and intraspecific identification of a mating partner.

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