no. 3626 CULICOIDES — WIRTH AND LEE 3 



The road crossing the central cordillera east of Popayan passes 

 through the region known as the Paramo de Purace. On the steep 

 slopes, natural forest still remains; the trunks and branches, thickly 

 covered with mosses, lichens, bromeliads, aroids, and vines, reflect 

 the very humid conditions (average annual rainfall above 2000 mm 

 and average temperature below 12° C) of the "montane rain forest." 

 Common trees of these mountain slopes are Weinmannia (encenillo), 

 Clusia (chagualo), and Orepanax. Cleared areas are covered with 

 broad and long-leaved grasses such as Chusquea (chusque) and Neuro- 

 lepsis, mixed with Blechnum (bushy ferns) and Espeletia (frailejon), 

 and boggy and marshy places are covered with mats and cushions of 



Table 1. — Mean values of characters of high altitude Colombian Culicoides 



Polytrichum moss and Sphagnum. In the meadows are bunches of the 

 grass Cortaderia species and shrubby Hypericum and Senecio; in the 

 ravines are Gunnera (hoyas de Pantano), lichens, and mosses. 



Our terminology and classification follow essentially that presented 

 by Wirth and Blanton (1959) in their paper on the Culicoides of Pan- 

 ama, to which the reader is referred for a fuller discussion. We recog- 

 nize that the dipterous antenna is 3-segmented and that the "segmen- 

 tation" of the flagellum is secondary, but, nevertheless, for convenience 

 we prefer to use the term "segment" for all 15 divisions of the Culi- 

 coides antenna. The antennal ratio (table 1) is obtained by dividing 

 the combined lengths of the distal five elongated segments by the 

 combined lengths of the preceding eight. The palpal ratio is the length- 



