Mosquitoes from Colombian Andes

Colombia, one of the world's megadiverse countries, has a highly diverse mosquito fauna and a high prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases. In order to provide relevant information about the diversity and taxonomy of mosquito species in Colombia and to test the usefulness of DNA barcodes, mosquito species collected over different gradients in the departments of Antioquia and Caldas were identified combining adult morphology and barcode sequences. A total of 22 different mosquito species from eight genera were identified using integrative techniques. We generated 77 barcode sequences with 16 species submitted as new records for public databases. We examined the usefulness of DNA barcodes to discriminate mosquito species from the Neotropics by compiling 1,292 sequences and using the tree-based methods of neighbor-joining and maximum likelihood. Both methodologies provided similar results by resolving 105 of 133 total species of mosquitoes separated into distinct clusters. Although there are some limitations in our study, this work provides useful taxonomic information and shows the importance of combining and integrating classic morphological methodologies with molecular tools to accurately identify diversity of mosquitoes.