The Pupae of the Mosquitoes of New Guinea 
George Henry Penn 1 
INTRODUCTION 
Many faunistic publications on mosqui- 
toes dismiss the pupal stage with a general ac- 
count of its external morphology and a few 
remarks to the effect that the pupa is of no 
practical significance in taxonomic work. This 
study of the pupae of New Guinea mosquitoes 
demonstrates, however, that pupal characters 
are relatively constant for any given species 
and that the examination of pupae is a valuable 
adjunct not only in the taxonomy of mosquitoes, 
but also in throwing light on some of the puz- 
zles of species relationships and evolutionary 
trends within the family Culicidae. 
Since the pupal stage is ordinarily of short 
duration it might be assumed that little change 
would occur in pupae in evolutionary processes, 
and such is probably the case. For example, 
the pupae of most species of the genera Aedes 
and Culex are more readily grouped into their 
respective subgenera than into their respective 
genera. On the other hand, specific differences 
seem to have been accentuated, and pupae of 
very closely related species, such as Uranotaenia 
nigerrima and U. papua, Aedes kochi and A. 
wallacei, are more easily separated than are the 
adults. 
With the exception of a paper by Hill (1925) 
nothing of significance had been published prior 
to World War II concerning the pupae of New 
Guinea mosquitoes, and only a few papers which 
include pupae of the indigenous mosquito 
fauna have appeared since the war. 
Of the 167 species which are autochthonous 
to the Australasian Region, the pupal stage of 
27 has been fragmentarily described or figured 
1 Department of Zoology, The Tulane University of 
Louisiana, New Orleans. Approved for publication 
October 28, 1947. 
in papers by Hill (1925: 62-77) and by Tay- 
lor (1929: 271-278). Other species found 
also in the Oriental Region and Wallacea, in- 
cluding Anopheles barbirostris, An. karwari, 
An. subpictus, Megarhinus splendens, Harpa- 
gomyia genurostris, Mansonia africana, M. uni- 
formis, Aedomyia catasticta, Aedes aurantius, 
and Culex sitiens, have been described, some of 
them rather completely, by such workers as 
Senevet (1931: 38; 1932: 209, 223), Craw- 
ford (1938: 39, 89) , Baisas (1936a: 74; 193 6b: 
212; 1938: 181), Barraud (1931: 1131), De 
Meijere (1911: 164), Edwards (1941: 384, 
417), and Edwards and Given (1928: 341). 
The species of cosmopolitan distribution, such as 
Aedes aegypti, A. vexans, and Culex fatigans, 
have received attention by several workers in 
different parts of the world. 
Sixty-eight of the 196 species of mosquitoes 
recorded from New Guinea by Bick (manu- 
script) are now known in the pupal stage and 
are included in this paper. Thirty-six species 
are here fully described and illustrated for the 
first time. Thirty-two species have been vari- 
ously described previously by others. I have 
redescribed and illustrated six of these; the 
descriptions of the remaining 26, 16 of which 
were only very poorly described and not avail- 
able for examination, have been quoted with- 
out change from original sources. 
An opportunity to collect material for this 
study was presented when Dr. George H. Bick 
and the writer were placed in charge of U. S. 
Naval Malaria Control Teams and assigned to 
duty in the southwest Pacific. Our combined 
collecting efforts, pooled after 15 months in 
New Guinea, amounted to 1,508 separate col- 
lections of larvae and pupae. Nine localities 
along the northern coast of New Guinea from 
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