Scanning Electron Microscopy and Geometric Contour Morphometry for Identifying Eggs of Three Amazonian Species of Mansonia (Diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract

The eggs of three Amazonian species of the genus Mansonia (Diptera: Culicidae) were analyzed using morphological and morphometric characters. Eggs of Mansonia humeralis Dyar & Knab, 1916 were morphologically different from those of Mansonia titillans (Walker, 1848) and Mansonia amazonensis (Theobald, 1901), which were more similar to each other according to linear and geometric morphometry. A principal component analysis generated from elliptic Fourier contour data (PC1—92.6% and PC2—2.61%) indicated that Ma. amazonensis and Ma. titillans are more similar to each other than either is to Ma. humeralis. Discriminant multivariate analysis was highly accurate with only four classification errors and a 90% accuracy rate. The results indicate that the three Amazonian species can be precisely distinguished in the egg stage and that geometric morphometry based on elliptic Fourier contours is a promising method for distinguishing eggs of species of Mansonia. An identification key based on egg morphology is provided to distinguish the four Neotropical species.

Identification of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus eggs based on image processing and elliptic fourier analysis

“…albopictus eggs, since there are currently no studies regarding these two species’ eggs classification. It also implies that the use of nonlinear classifier was able to improve the classification performance of this method, instead of only using LDA 30 , 31 , 35 , 36 .…”

“…The use of the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) algorithm in this study was based on previous studies 30 , 31 , 35 , 36 . The classification process began by randomly selecting 20 samples of each species from the data set so that as many as 40 samples of test data are obtained that will be used to evaluate the performance of the model.…”

“…Thus, we hypothesize that they could be classified by their shape. In this paper, the classification is carried out using a Linear Discriminant Analysis 30 , 31 , 35 , 36 and several alternative classification algorithms.…”

Efficient Monitoring of Adult and Immature Mosquitoes Through Metabarcoding of Bulk Samples: A Case Study for Non-Model Culicids With Unique Ecologies

“…indubitans are difficult to differentiate morphologically, and even non-degraded adults can be confused ( Barbosa et al 2007 ). Indeed, the lack of external markers has often necessitated additional characters, such as egg structure ( da Silva Ferreira et al 2020 ). Here we show that, even from a relatively small number of samples, metabarcoding can identify patterns and produce actionable data for the monitoring and control of morphologically similar mosquito species.…”

Diet composition affects the rearing of Mansonia humeralis (Diptera: Culicidae) immatures under laboratory conditions

“…The eggs of Mansonia humeralis were identified using the description provided by Silva Ferreira et al (2020). The polystyrene strips containing the eggs were placed in plastic containers (8.5 x 36.0 x 43.5 cm) with two liters of dechlorinated filtered water and larval hatching occurred after an average of 4 to 6 days.…”