A Numerical Taxonoinic Study of the Genus Psorophora (Diptera: Culicidae)

Author： HENDRICKSON JOHN A. SOKAL ROBERT R.

Publisher： Entomological Society of America

ISSN： 1938-2901

Source： Annals of the Entomological Society of America, Vol.61, Iss.2, 1968-03, pp. : 385-392

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Abstract

This study of the phenetic relationships among 29 species of culicinc mosquitoes was based on 158 adult characters. These species included 15 in the genus Psorophora (including subgenera Psorophora, Grabhamia, and Janthinosoma) and, for the purposes of comparison, 14 in Aedes. Findings arc reported as phenograms based on correlation and distance coefficients, and as graphs representing the positions of the species in a 3-dimensional factor-space. Although the various subgenera appear distinct, little justification is found for uniting the subgenera Psorophora, Grabhamia, and Janthinosoma into the genus Psorophora as distinct from Aedes. Very low correlations between classifications based on leg characters and those on nonleg characters were found in this study. From the analysis, it is obvious that the classification of these 29 species in the conventional, hierarchic, mutually exclusive manner is unsatisfactory, because it does not represent their phenetic relationships as revealed by this study.