Culicidae

Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a family of small flies consisting of 3,600 species. The word mosquito is Spanish and Portuguese for little fly. Mosquitoes have a slender, segmented body, one pair of wings, three pairs of long hair-like legs, and a specialized, highly elongated set of mouthparts forming a proboscis, adapted for piercing and sucking. All mosquitoes drink nectar from flowers; females of many species have adapted to also drink blood. The group diversified during the Cretaceous period. Evolutionary biologists view mosquitoes as micropredators, small animals that parasitise larger ones by drinking their blood without immediately killing them. Medical parasitologists view mosquitoes as vectors of disease, carrying protozoan parasites or bacterial or viral pathogens from one host to another.

Culicidae

Muhammad Mahdi Karim · GFDL 1.2 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
mosquitoPBDB
Sits inside
CulicoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 93 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 64 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 6 of 64 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 64 occurrencesEocene — about 34 of 64 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 10 of 64 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 8 of 64 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 64 occurrencesPleistocene — about 2 of 64 occurrences103–99 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 2 occurrences96–92 Mya — about 1 occurrence85–82 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences82–79 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences79–75 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences75–72 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences58–55 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences55–51 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences51–48 Mya — about 2 occurrences48–44 Mya — about 4 occurrences44–41 Mya — about 3 occurrences41–38 Mya — about 2 occurrences38–34 Mya — about 22 occurrences34–31 Mya — about 3 occurrences31–27 Mya — about 2 occurrences27–24 Mya — about 6 occurrences24–21 Mya — about 3 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 4 occurrences17–14 Mya — about 3 occurrences6.8–3.4 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences3.4–0 Mya — about 5 occurrences93.9 Mya11.7 ka103 Mya0 Mya

64 occurrences of Culicidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

64 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

13 formations

Bouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WKishenehn — 48.39°N, 113.70°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EGreen River — 39.60°N, 108.40°WGreen River — 41.55°N, 109.51°WGreen River — 42.13°N, 110.13°WMazantic Shale — 17.15°N, 92.70°WRita Blanca — 35.71°N, 102.45°WForemost — 49.83°N, 111.70°WSalt — 47.69°N, 7.53°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°ECampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°ELa Toca — 19.55°N, 70.61°WFort Crittenden — 31.67°N, 110.77°WHarudi — 23.72°N, 68.84°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Culicidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 28 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Culicidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Culicidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

3,610 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 43 sites for Culicidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

39 references

Each of the 64 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 27 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Culicidae

Credit
Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Licence
GFDL 1.2
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Culicidae was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCulicoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Meigen 1818