Illinois Natural History Survey Reports

              1
R e p o r t s
Autumn 2007
No. 393
Illinois and Indiana Parks
as Refuges for Stoneflies
(Plecoptera)
2
Audio Radio Telemetry
and Studies of Communi-cation
and Movement
3
Hybridization between
Bighead and Silver Carp
in the Mississippi and
Illinois Rivers
4
Species Spotlight:
Wolf Spider
6
The Naturalist's
Apprentice: Shining for
Spiders
7
INSIDE
At first, the introduction into Illi-nois
of a dark white-striped, day-biting
mosquito associated with
waste tires sounds like déjà vu,
harkening back almost 20 years
to the discovery of the Asian
tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus)
in piles of used and waste tires
scattered throughout the state.
Unfortunately, history is repeat-ing
itself with a new invader, the
Asian rock pool mosquito Aedes
(Ochlerotatus) japonicus, pre-sumably
introduced and spread
via used tires. Ironically, the
rapid detection in Illinois of this
exotic import in 2006 was at least
partially due to the Waste Tire
Act of 1992, which helped create
the Medical Entomology Program
at the Illinois Natural History
Survey (INHS). The Waste Tire
Act was passed in order to pro-vide
for the collection, disposal,
and recycling of used tires, and
to fund research on vector insects
associated with them.
The
Asian rock
pool mos-quito
was
first dis-covered
in
the United
States
between
1998 and
1999
in three
northeast-ern
states
(New York,
Asian Mosquito Invades Illinois….Again
Connecticut, and New Jersey).
For a brief time, some research-ers
believed that the temporal
and spatial overlap of West Nile
Virus (WNV) transmission with
the Asian rock pool mosquito
distribution was more than a
coincidence. They suggested
this species might be the critical
bridge vector of WNV to humans.
Aedes japonicus is native to Ja-pan,
Korea, and much of eastern
Asia, where it is believed to be a
vector of Japanese Encephalitis
Virus, which is closely related to
WNV. The dispersal of the rock
pool mosquito into Europe and
North America appears to be the
unintended consequence of the
worldwide used tire market. In
the United States, the spread of
this exotic species is well docu-mented
due to the continent-wide
heightened surveillance for WNV
The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. Photo by Michael Jeffords, INHS
Office of the Chief
The Asian rock pool mosquito, Aedes (Och-lerotatus)
japonicus, a new invader to Illinois.
Photo courtesy of Mike Sardalis, U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases
in mosquitoes. Fortunately, the
distinctive morphological charac-teristics
of both larvae and adults
allow Aedes japonicus to be
easily distinguished from native
mosquito species in field-collected
material.
On July 7, 2006, adults of the
Asian rock pool mosquito were
discovered in traps in a woodlot
south of campus at the University
of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign
by INHS Medical Entomology
staff. Within days, additional
specimens were collected from
a container and adult traps in
another woodlot less than a quar-ter
of a mile away from the first
site. Due to intensive mosquito
surveillance for WNV through-out
Urbana and Champaign, we
are reasonably certain this area
Continued on back page