An Electrophoretic Comparison of Laboratory Colonies and Natural Populations of Four Species of Toxorhynchites (Diptera: Culicidae)

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Abstract
An electrophoretic comparison of 13 enzyme systems, consisting of the isozymes coded at 17 loci, was made between laboratory colonies of Toxorhynchites rutilus, Tx. theobaldi, Tx. amboinensis, and Tx. brevipalpis and 4 natural populations representing both subspecies of Tx. rutilus that occur in the United States. Identity values obtained from comparisons of the natural populations of Tx. rutilus were large, suggesting that the morphological differences by which these subspecies are defined arose with little differentiation of enzyme polymorphisms. Comparisons of the laboratory colonies of the different species both to one another and to the natural populations of Tx. rutilus yielded very small identity values. Most of the colonies had heterozygosity and polymorphism values in the range observed in wild populations of Tx. rutilus and other wellstudied species of mosquitoes. These observations are discussed in relation to the choice of one of the colonized species for release to control vector mosquito species in the United States.