Mosquitos
The common mosquito (scientific name Culex pipiens) has a rather minute appearance and size and a brownish background color.The abdomen is truncated, and each segment is crossed by two transversal bands: brown the distal one, beige the proximal one. there are two biological forms: one rural and ornithophilous and one anthropophilic, particularly adapted to urban environments, which represents an evolution of the former. From the biological point of view, the anthropophilic form is differentiated by characters that have been selected following adaptation to life in closed environments, often underground: it is in fact able to mate in confined spaces (stenogamy), to carry out the first cycle of production of eggs without blood meal (autogenic) and of not carrying out the winter diapause (homodynamy).
Behaviors
The activity of the common mosquito is predominantly nocturnal, in fact it is almost certainly the annoying hiss that we sometimes hear in our ears on summer nights. It is a mainly endophagous mosquito (it attacks us inside the houses) and anthropophilic, at least in its urban variant.It colonizes almost all types of stagnant water collections, from road drains to rice fields. In an urban environment, it shares many development foci with the tiger mosquito (bins, manholes, etc.), but can colonize others, such as cellars and crawl spaces subject to flooding, typical of areas with a high water table.
