Geometrical Variation of Wing Shape in the Japanese Encephalitis Vector, Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901 (Diptera: Culicidae), from Different Geographical Locations

Abstract

The wing geometric morphometrics (WGM) is a powerful method for identifying variation within species and differentiating from other species. Therefore, this research aimed to determine the wing geometric variation in Cx. tritaeniorhynchus from different locations and also compared it to the wing geometry of the highly resemble species of Cx. vishnui. A total of 54 females of Cx. tritaeniorhynchus from Ende Regency (Wologai and Nanganesa) and Konawe Regency (Tamesandi and Puuhopa) were collected, while 34 females of Cx. vishnui were collected from nearest locations (Mautapaga, Ende Regency, and Bajo Indah, Konawe Regency). In addition, 17 females of Aedes aegypti were also used in the analysis representing species outside the Genus Culex as an outgroup. After being photographed, the wing was marked to create landmarks (LMs) using the tpsUtil 1.70 and tpsDig2 2.29 software series. The LMs were superimposed using the Procrustes Fit function and the canonical variate analysis (CVA) was performed with MorphoJ 1.06d software, and the Mahalobis distance matrix and the dendrogram (unweighted squared-change parsimony with 10.000x permutations) were subsequently generated. The result demonstrated that the intraspecies geographical variation on the wing geometry occurred in Cx. tritaeniorhynchus. Further, WGM also could distinguish Cx. tritaeniorhynchus apart from Cx. vishnui. The statistical analysis has marked out that the geometrical variation in Cx. tritaeniorhynchus wing can be utilized to distinguish different populations from different geographical areas. The feature could also be a tool to differentiate Cx. tritaeniorhynchus from Cx. vishnui.