Anopheles gambiae
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Diptera
- Family: Culicidae
- Genus: Anopheles
- Species: Anopheles gambiae
Visual Description
Anopheles gambiae is a small, slender mosquito. As observed in specimens from the TreeOfLife-200M dataset, the adult exhibits the characteristic morphology of the genus, including long, slender legs and a proboscis adapted for piercing.[1] The wings are typically marked with distinct dark and pale scales, a feature often used in identification.[1]
Biology and Speciation
Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto is a member of the Anopheles gambiae sensu lato species complex.[2] It is divided into two sympatric, partially isolated subtaxa known as the M form and S form.[2] These forms mate assortatively in nature, with approximately 98.8% of wild-caught gravid females having mated within their own form in areas of sympatry, though substantial gene flow still occurs between them.[2]
Genomic research has identified three "speciation islands" where the M and S forms are significantly differentiated, located on Chromosome 2L, the centromeric end of the X chromosome, and a small region on Chromosome 2R.[2] These regions are thought to contain genes responsible for the ecological and behavioral reproductive isolation between the forms.[2]
Gallery
References
- 1 2 3 Dataset view for Animalia / Arthropoda / Insecta / Diptera / Culicidae / Anopheles / gambiae constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Thomas L. Turner; Matthew W. Hahn; Sergey V. Nuzhdin. Genomic Islands of Speciation in Anopheles gambiae. PLoS Biology. 2005. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030285.