Culicoides

Culicoides is a genus of biting midges in the family Ceratopogonidae. There are over 1000 species in the genus, which is divided into many subgenera. Several species are known to be vectors of various diseases and parasites which can affect animals. The genus has a long fossil record, with earliest known fossils being from Burmese amber, around 99 million years old.

Culicoides

Scott Bauer, USDA ARS · Public Domain · 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
Sits inside
CulicoidiniPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 75 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 18.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 13.82 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 116 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 51 of 116 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 116 occurrencesEocene — about 38 of 116 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 12 of 116 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 15 of 116 occurrencesMiocene102–99 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 2 occurrences96–93 Mya — about 3 occurrences93–90 Mya — about 5 occurrences90–87 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences87–84 Mya — about 4 occurrences84–81 Mya — about 9 occurrences81–78 Mya — about 9 occurrences78–75 Mya — about 9 occurrences75–72 Mya — about 9 occurrences42–39 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences39–36 Mya — about 16 occurrences36–33 Mya — about 22 occurrences30–27 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences27–24 Mya — about 8 occurrences24–21 Mya — about 3 occurrences21–18 Mya — about 5 occurrences18–15 Mya — about 8 occurrences15–12 Mya — about 2 occurrences93.9 Mya18.5 Mya102 Mya12 Mya

116 occurrences of Culicoides on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

116 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

6 formations

Foremost — 49.83°N, 111.70°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERaritan — 40.47°N, 74.32°WRaritan — 40.43°N, 74.33°WBarstow — 34.95°N, 116.83°WBarstow — 34.94°N, 116.83°WKheta — 71.31°N, 99.56°EMazantic Shale — 17.15°N, 92.70°W

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The named rock units Culicoides has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 66 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Culicoides and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Culicoides and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

3,743 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 44 sites for Culicoides, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

22 references

Each of the 116 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. 10 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 Culicoides

Credit
Scott Bauer, USDA ARS
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itCulicoidini through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1809