A New Mosquito from Fiji, Aedes (Finlaya ) freycinetiae n. sp. 
(Diptera: Culicidae) 
Marshall Laird 1 
Until Marks (1947) described Aedes ( Finlaya ) 
fijiensis from Viti Levu, it had been generally 
accepted that the representative of the wide- 
spread kochi group occurring there was A . 
kochi (Donitz) itself. The easternmost limit 
of the latter species is now placed at, or at all 
events near, Nissan Island, Territory of New 
Guinea (Marks, 1947). The only indication 
that A. fijiensis may not be the sole member 
of its subgenus occurring in Fiji is Marks’ 
(1947) brief account of a single distinctive 
larva — which she queried as perhaps referable 
to A. samoanus (Griinberg) — collected from 
Pandanus axils in association with A. fijiensis. 
There are no records of the latter species from 
outside of Fiji, but A. samoanus is found in 
Tonga as well as Samoa (Edwards, 1926) and 
Iyengar (1955) has recently listed it from the 
Wallis Islands. These two mosquitoes are the 
most easterly representatives of their sub- 
genus thus far described from the South 
Pacific. 
Paine (1943) considered leaf axils of the 
common coastal Pandanus tectorius (Sol.) to 
be the usual larval habitat of A. fijiensis (= A. 
kochi in part). He also reported this insect 
from the smaller Pandanus thurstonii Wright, 
and, less frequently still, from the large aroid 
Alocasia indica. Neither Amos (1947) nor 
Marks (1947) listed any additional larval 
habitats, Marks (presumably following Paine 
in Edwards, 1935) mistakenly referring A. 
indica to the genus Colocasia. 
Whilst A. fijiensis is primarily associated with 
1 Formerly of Department of Parasitology, Univer- 
sity of Malaya, Singapore. Present address: Institute of 
Parasitology, McGill University, Macdonald College, 
Quebec, Canada. Manuscript received July 13, 1956. 
Pandanus , the larvae of A. samoanus occur 
most commonly in the leaf axils of Alocasia 
and Colocasia (Buxton and Hopkins, 1927). 
The latter authors never found A. samoanus 
larvae in axils of Pandanus , wild Canna , and 
pineapples as did O’Connor (1923); neither 
did they ever collect them from tree holes or 
other small simple containers. However, 
Knight (in Bohart and Ingram, 1946) re- 
corded A. samoanus from Pandanus in Samoa, 
and Laird (1956) took a few larvae from the 
axils of a large Pandanus in Tonga and a few 
others from a small tree hole (a step in a 
coconut palm trunk) near Apia, Samoa. 
Finlaya larvae were collected from Freycine- 
tia leaf axils, a new habitat for mosquitoes 
of this subgenus (c.f. Knight and Marks, 
1952), during field studies in Fiji early in 
1954 (Laird, 1956). The species concerned 
proved to belong to the kochi group, coming 
closest to A. samoanus but differing in detail 
from this insect, A. fijiensis , and other mem- 
bers of the group as described herein. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
The Fijian and Tongan collections to which 
reference is made were undertaken with the 
help of my wife, and Dr. L. F. Jepson of the 
Health Department, Western Samoa, ren- 
dered valuable assistance at Apia. I am grate- 
ful to Mr. J. Parham of the Department of 
Agriculture, Fiji, for his identification of Frey- 
cinetia milnei Seem. All material was collected 
in the course of mosquito studies initiated 
by the Royal New Zealand Air Force and 
supported by a grant from the N. Z. Depart- 
ment of Scientific and Industrial Research. 
342 
