MosKeyTool

Date de création : 2016-05-11 16:09:13 - Dernière mise à jour : 2017-09-28 18:48:30

The MosKeyTool is intended to help people, who are entomologists or not, to identify the species of a mosquito specimen.
This interactive key includes 128 mosquito species in 66 geographical areas in Euro-Mediterranean and Black Sea Regions.
This user-friendly interface integrates two categories of criteria: morphological (the specimen observation) and geographical (the provenance country of the specimen). The process of identification ends when these criteria pinpoint a single species (most of the time) or a small number of species (if belonging to a species complex).
The MosKeyTool targets two stages: adult female and 4th stage larva. It may also keep going with male and larva of stages <4 with lower level of confidence.
The reference area of MosKeyTool is the western palearctic biogreographic region, including Europe, Atlantic and Mediterranean Islands, Northern Africa, South Caucasus and part of the Middle-East. Most of the time, the countries are used as geographical unit. However the main islands or isolated archipelago are also used as a geographic unit.
MosKeyTool can also be used as supporting material for (self)learning and teaching the morphology, taxonomy and systematic of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae).

MosKeyTool relies on the two CD-ROM:
- "The Mosquitoes of Europe", F. Schaffner, G. Angel, B. Geoffroy, J.-P. Hervy, A. Rhaiem, J. Brunhes - in collaboration with EID, IRD Editions, 2001.
- "The Mosquitoes of Mediterranean Africa", J. Brunhes, A. Rhaim, B. Geoffroy, G. Angel, J.-P. Hervy - in collaboration with Institut Pasteur Tunis, IRD Editions, 2000.

Taxa: 128 females, 126 larvae
Geographical units: 66
Morphological criteria: 143

Suggestion for citation:
Gunay F, Picard M, Robert V, 2017. MosKeyTool, an interactive identification key for mosquitoes of Euro-Mediterranean. Version 1.2. available at http://medilabsecure.com/moskeytool. Last update: 29/09/2017

  • Filiz Gunay, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey and MediLabSecure, Unit MIVEGEC (224 IRD-5290 CNRS-Montpellier University), France
  • Marie Picard, Project manager, MediLabSecure, Unit MIVEGEC (224 IRD-5290 CNRS-Montpellier University), France
  • Vincent Robert, Senior researcher at French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), Unit MIVEGEC (224 IRD-5290 CNRS-Montpellier University), France

About Xper:
Xper is a free software dedicated to computer-aided-identification and developed by LIS (Laboratoire Informatique et Systématique, Paris, France). For more information, see http://www.infosyslab.fr/?q=en/resources/software/xper2
MosKeyTool had been developed with Xper2 version 2.3.2.

About the database :
MosKeyTool is an identification tool which has been developed by the medical entomology working group (WP4) of MediLabSecure in 2017.
This tool is a deliverable of MediLabSecure. The MediLabSecure project is supported by the European Commission (DEVCO: IFS/21010/23/_194).

The authors would like to acknowledge all the partners of the MediLabSecure network http://medilabsecure.com
A special thanks to Gilbert Le Goff (IRD), Françis Schaffner (Francis Schaffner Consultancy), Tatiana Sulesco (Institute of zoology, Moldova) and Yvonne-Marie Linton (WRBU, USA).

MosKeyTool is in development so if you have relevant information concerning taxonomy and new presence/absence for a country, please be kind enough to share at moskeytool@gmail.com, so we will be able to improve/update a new version of MosKeyTool.