Genus Maorigoeldia Edwards, 1930
Maorigoeldia argyropus (Walker, 1848), original combination: Culex argyropus.
Subfamily Culicinae, tribe Sabethini. Genus Maorigoeldia includes a single species, Mg. argyropus. Genus abbreviation – Mg.
The adults of Mg. argyropus are large, beautiful mosquitoes with light bluish and silver scales. They are unique among sabethines in having well-developed acrostichal setae. Larvae are distinguished from other Old World genera by the presence of a single pair of seta 4-X (distinction from non-sabethines), a circular occipital foramen (distinction from Malaya and Topomyia), seta 13-P (distinction from Kimia, Malaya and Topomyia) and comb scales in more than a single row (distinction from Kimia and Tripteroides). See Sabethini.
Maorigoeldia exhibits many peculiar characteristics that led Belkin (1962) to regard it as the most primitive sabethine. Whereas this view was contradicted in the phylogenetic analysis of sabethines conducted by Judd (1996), which placed Maorigoeldia as the sister to the New World genera of Sabethini, it was corroborated in the cladistic analysis of mosquito genera conducted by Harbach & Kitching (1998), which recovered Maorigoeldia as the most basal clade of the tribe.
Larvae of Mg. argyropus are found in tree holes and various artificial containers near forests. They were collected once in a pool with leaves in the bed of a drying stream. The larvae rest on the bottom of the cavity with the dorsal surface down and seldom come to the surface to obtain air. Females have been observed resting on the trunks of trees and approaching humans without landing or biting.
Maorigoeldia argyropus is not a medically or economically important species.
Maorigoeldia argyropus is endemic in New Zealand.
Belkin, 1962 (New Zealand, genus and species descriptions, bionomics, distribution); Belkin, 1968 (New Zealand, taxonomy, description, bionomics, distribution); Lee et al., 1988 (New Zealand, taxonomy, genus and species descriptions, literature, bionomics); Harbach & Peyton, 1993 (comparative morphology of larval maxillae).
