Culicoides ( Monoculicoides ) grandensis Grogan and Phillips, 2008

Culicoides ( Monoculicoides) grandensis Grogan and Phillips View in CoL

( Fig. 53 View Figures 50–55. 50 , 173)

Culicoides ( Monoculicoides) grandensis Grogan and Phillips, 2008: 196 View in CoL (diagnosis, male, female; fig. female antenna, palpus, spermatheca, wing; male genitalia; Utah: Grand County). Grogan and Lysyk 2015: 9 (key; diagnosis; bionomics; assignment to “ C. nubeculosus View in CoL - stigma View in CoL complex”; not “n. sp. 113”). Shults and Borkent 2018: 458 View Cited Treatment (key; numerical characters; female pupa; fig. dorsal apotome).

Diagnosis. ( Tables 14, 15) Pale brown; wing with faint pattern; in r 3, m 1, m 2, cua 1 extensive and more of dark irregular curves and pale streaks than ovoid spots; scutum without dark spots at seta bases; legs without apparent banding; mandibular and lacinial teeth vestigial; one sclerotized spermatheca, ovoid, with opening>0.5 the diameter of the spermatheca, without neck; aedeagus bare, entire; parameres fused basally.

Distribution. Utah (Grand County).

Larval ecology. Jones (1961b) collected C. grandensis (as “n. sp.”) pupae from the nonvegetated sunlit margin of an alkaline stream near Cisco ( 47 km north-northeast of Moab), Grand County, along with immatures of a Stonei group species (as C. stonei ), C. occidentalis or C. sonorensis (as C. variipennis australis ), C. haematopotus (may be C. defoliarti ), C. jamesi , and C. crepuscularis .

Adult behavior. The absence of mandibular and lacinial teeth on the female indicates C. grandensis does not blood-feed.

One female was incandescent light-trapped 18 September 2001 at 38.54606°N 109.59159°W in Grand County. Additional data from Jones’s 30 May 1958 collection of two pupae reared with a probable emergence date of 20 June 1958 ( Grogan and Phillips 2008) are also included in the seasonal distribution (Table 5).

Remarks. Culicoides grandensis was originally thought to be Willis Wirth’s and Antony Downes’s “n. sp. 113” ( Grogan and Phillips 2008). It is now thought that “n. sp. 113” is likely Culicoides stigma (Meigen) ( Grogan and Lysyk 2015) .