Comparative biology of disjunct populations of the pitcher plant mosquito Wyeomyia smithii (Diptera: Culicidae) in the southeastern United States

During the past 16 years, we have periodically assessed the blood-feeding behavior and other aspects of the biology of pitcher plant mosquitoes from Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. These mosquitoes are commensals of the purple pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, and typically are restricted in distribution to locations where the plants occur. During this period, mosquitoes from an isolated relict population in Georgia have exhibited an increasing tendency to blood feed, based on feeding assays of caged mosquitoes tested after they had produced an autogenous egg batch, such that the blood feeding behavior is becoming more similar to those from Florida, while North Carolina mosquitoes have remained autogenous. We also compared relative fecundity, hexamerin (larval storage protein) utilization, within and between population genetic structure, larval feeding behavior, and larval and adult morphology, with a general finding that mosquitoes from Georgia are intermediate in most aspects between those from Florida and North Carolina, but have become more similar to mosquitoes from Florida. These results suggest that long term changes in temperature and precipitation may be driving changes in the biology of these mosquitoes, in particular in Georgia, where higher temperatures and lower precipitation have occurred during the study period relative to previous long term climatic conditions.