Laramie's Main Mosquitoes - Therese

 Hello!

A few weeks ago, someone asked me how I could study mosquitoes in Laramie since there was none. As of today I can confirm that they are very very wrong, because if they're right then I don't know what I've spent my days counting. 

I have been working with the City of Laramie mosquito crew for about a week and a half now. The team has been incredibly welcoming and it's been really fun to learn how to run their trapping lines. The traps used are composed of a CO2 tank, a mesh sort of net, a light, and batteries to run it. Honestly, it looks like a little beekeeper outfit hanging in a tree. In general, it is a fairly simple trap that lures mosquitoes in and keep them there over night. 

Each morning, we follow the trapping lines (there are two that we follow, one with 5 pounds CO2 tanks and a line of 20 pounders) and collect the mosquitoes from the night before and unset the traps. We return with the mosquitoes to freeze them for about an hour or more and identify/count each one that was caught for each trapping location. There are three main species that I have found in this past week: Aedes idahoensis, Aedes melanimon, and Aedes dorsalis. Each of these are rather similar looking, primarily Ae. idahoensis and Ae. melanimon. I took photos to try and show the difference, but let's just say it really showed... faults of my camera (in other words, you will have to zoom in, sorry). Either way, here is what they look like:

Ae. idahoensis: No stripes on the legs, clear black and white horizontal lines on the back

Ae. melanimon: Stripes on legs, dark markings continue down back entirely

Ae. dorsalis: Striped legs, dark markings slow down before the last two scales, leaving more white on the body

Thanks for hanging in there, I will be back next week with more images on the counting process!