224 A NOTE ON EXPERIMENTAL CROSSING OF AeDES (STEGOMYIA) SCUTELLARIS SCUTELLARIS WALKER AND AeDES (STEGOMYIA) SCUTELLARIS KATHERINENSIS WOODHILL (DIPTERA, CULICIDAE). By A. R. Woodhill, Department of Zoology, University of Sydney. (One Text-figure.) [Read 28th September, 1949.] Introduction. The "scutellaris group" of mosquitoes has been recorded from a wide area including parts of Polynesia, Melanesia, the Philippines, North Australia, the Netherlands East Indies and the Andaman Islands. Numerous varieties and subspecies have been described by earlier workers and considerable confusion existed, but in recent years our knowledge of the group has been greatly enhanced by the work of Farner and Bohart (1945), Stone and Farner (1945) and Stone (1947). These authors have straightened out the previous confusion in nomenclature and have described twelve forms, giving each of these full specific status. In addition, a form from North Australia has been described by the author (Woodhill, 1949) as a subspecies of A. scutellaris Walker. Some forms of this group have also been recorded (as A. variegata) from Celebes (Bonne-Wepster and Brug, 1932), Sumatra (Brug, 1931) and the Andaman Islands (Barraud, 1927)), but much more knowledge is required of this western portion of its range before any separation into species or subspecies can be made. It will be seen from Text-figure 1 (based on the work of the authors mentioned above) that the "scutellaris group" presents a very interesting problem in speciation. The differences used to separate the species consist of small variations in the markings of the thorax, legs and proboscis and in slight variations in the structure of the basal DISTRIBUTION of Aedes scutellaris Walk, and closely related species . Text-figure 1.
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