Morphological variability and identification of common mosquito species (Diptera: Culicidae) in Slovenia

Mosquitoes are of public health interest as many of them are vectors of pathogens that can cause diseases in humans. If they are not perfectly preserved, their identification can be difficult. Therefore, we tested the use of an alternative, advanced method of geometric morphometrics for the analysis of wing morphological variability in five ( Anopheles , Aedes , Coquillettidia , Culex , Culiseta ) genera and ten Slovenian mosquito species alone, seven autochthonous and three invasive. We analysed the intragenic and intraspecific variability in wing size and shape. The results showed that the analysed mosquito species differ in wing size and have different levels of variability, which also affects the correct identification of each taxon. Different classification approaches reach up to 80% ( Culex and Coquillettidia ), 98% ( Aedes ) and 100% ( Anopheles and Culiseta ) accuracy, respectively. Furthermore, additional information on wing size can help in identification when the data and wing venation are less reliable. The distances between taxa centroids in morphological space reflect genetic distances and taxonomic hierarchy: on average, they are greatest between the two subfamilies (Anophelinae, Culicinae), followed by the distances between genera within the Culicinae family and finally by the distances between species within the genera Aedes and Culex . Nevertheless, the topology of the similarity tree based on morphological data reflects the topology of the genetic phylogeny only at the subfamily level. We assessed that geometric morphometrics on wings can be used as an alternative method when other structures otherwise traditionally used for species identification are broken.