MosKeyTool

Date de création : 2016-05-11 16:09:13 - Dernière mise à jour : 2018-06-12 16:23:53

MosKeyTool is intended to help people, who are entomologist or not, to identify the species of a mosquito specimen.
This interactive key includes 131 mosquito species in 71 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).
MosKeyTool targets two stages: adult female and 4th stage larva. It may also keep going with male and 1st 2nd 3rd stage larva with lower level of confidence.
The reference area of MosKeyTool is the western palaearctic 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 a geographical unit. However the main islands, peninsulas or isolated archipelago are also used as geographic units.
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 two CD-ROM:
- "The Mosquitoes of Europe", Schaffner F, Angel G, Geoffroy B, Hervy JP, Rhaiem A, Brunhes J - in collaboration with EID, IRD Editions, 2001.
- "The Mosquitoes of Mediterranean Africa", Brunhes J, Rhaim A, Geoffroy B, Angel G, Hervy JP - in collaboration with Institut Pasteur Tunis, IRD Editions, 2000.

By regard to version 1, the present Version 2 includes the European part of Russia, updates on the distribution of each mosquito species in the complete area, and corrects some bugs and imprecision.
We thank all the users of the version 1 who helped us to improve the key. We are especially grateful to Tatiana Sulesco and Alexei Vladimirovich Khalin for sharing knowledge and photos used in Version 2. and to Daniel Couret for drawing the distribution maps.

Taxa: 131 females, 128 larvae
Geographical units: 71
Morphological criteria: 145

Suggestion for citation:
Gunay F, Picard M, Robert V, 2018. MosKeyTool, an interactive identification key for mosquitoes of Euro-Mediterranean. Version 2. available at http://medilabsecure.com/moskeytool. Last update: 10/06/2018

  • 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.