Yellow fever mosquito

Naming

The genome of this species of mosquito was sequenced and analyzed by a consortium including scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research, the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Broad Institute, and the University of Notre Dame, and published in 2007. The effort in sequencing its DNA was intended to provide new avenues for research into insecticides and possible genetic modification to prevent the spread of virus. This was the second mosquito species to have its genome sequenced in full. The published data included the 1.38 billion base pairs containing the insect's estimated 15,419 protein-encoding genes. The sequence indicates the species diverged from "Drosophila melanogaster" about million years ago, and "Anopheles gambiae" and this species diverged about million years ago.The species was first named in 1757 by Fredric Hasselquist in his treatise '. Hasselquist was provided with the names and descriptions by his mentor, Carl Linnaeus. This work was later translated into German and published in 1762 as '. Since the latter is an uncritical reproduction of the former, they are both considered to antedate the starting point for zoological nomenclature in 1758. Nonetheless, the name "Aedes aegypti" was frequently used, starting with H. G. Dyar in 1920.

To stabilise the nomenclature, a petition to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature was made by P. F. Mattingly, Alan Stone, and Kenneth L. Knight in 1962. It also transpired that, although the name "Aedes aegypti" was universally used for the yellow fever mosquito, Linnaeus had actually described a species now known as "Aedes caspius". In 1964, the commission ruled in favour of the proposal, validating Linnaeus' name, and transferring it to the species for which it was in general use.

The yellow fever mosquito belongs to the tribe Aedini of the dipteran family Culicidae and to the genus "Aedes" and subgenus "Stegomyia". According to one recent analysis, the subgenus "Stegomyia" of the genus "Aedes" should be raised to the level of genus. The proposed name change has been ignored by most scientists; at least one scientific journal, the "Journal of Medical Entomology", has officially encouraged authors dealing with aedine mosquitoes to continue to use the traditional names, unless they have particular reasons for not doing so.