The Nomenclature and Taxonomic Status of the Mosquitoes of the Anopheles Maculipennis Complex1

Abstract

The mosquitoes of the Anopheles maculipennis group have been the subject of many hundreds of papers since the publication, in 1920 and 1921, of the theories of Roubaud, Wesenberg-Lund, and Grassi to account for the absence of malaria in regions where maculipennis is abundant. Roubaud thought that there were two “physiological races,” one adapted to feeding on man, the other on large domestic animals. Wesenberg-Lund thought that in Denmark the species had changed its food habits, becoming adapted to large domestic animals. Grassi, like Roubaud, thought there was a “biological race” that did not bite man. The search for the explanation of this problem of “anophelism without malaria” has made maculipennis one of the most thoroughly studied of all insects, and has uncovered a situation that is of considerable general biological interest from the point of view of the “species problem.”