''Aedes australis'' is a

brackish water Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...

mosquito Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning " gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "li ...

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

from the subgenus '' Halaedes''. It is native to Australia. It was first found in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

in 1961 and is now present in the southern half of the South Island.

Habit and habitat

The species breeds in littoral rock and brackish pools just above the tide line and remains close to their breeding habitats. Additionally, most adult females have been known and tested to be autogenous which allows females to lay their first batch of eggs before taking or ingesting a blood meal. Their autogenous capacities can however be greatly altered by the conditions that surround them in their environment, such as temperature. The percentage of autogenous females from the same breeding pool can vary from 40% in the summer to 85% in the winter due to temperature swings and slower development. There are anautogenous populations of ''Aedes australis'' in Tasmania and South Australia, meaning those mosquitoes have to consume blood to reproduce. ''Ae. australis'' are almost exclusively anautogenous in eastern New Zealand. In addition, humans are the most common source of blood for ''A. australis'' in those regions. The eggs of this species are

rhomboidal Traditionally, in two-dimensional geometry, a rhomboid is a parallelogram in which adjacent sides are of unequal lengths and angles are non-right angled. A parallelogram with sides of equal length ( equilateral) is a rhombus but not a rhomboid. ...

in both ventral and dorsal view.

Habit and habitat

References

Further reading