Morphology and mini-barcodes: The inclusion of larval sampling and NGS-based barcoding improves robustness of ecological analyses of mosquito communities

A significant proportion of vector-borne diseases are transmitted by blood-sucking dipterans, including mosquitoes. Understanding transmission risks requires accurate identification of species across heterogenous habitats, but many cryptic and polymorphic species are overlooked when using morphological identification. Estimates of mosquito diversity are typically based on adult female trapping methods which tend to target host-seeking species and may represent a biased snapshot of community structure. Unfortunately, diversity estimates based on larval data are rarely included in mosquito ecological analyses. We carried out adult and larval sampling over six months in Singapore using an integrative approach of morphological identification and molecular delineation with mini-barcodes (313 bp) generated on a Next Generation Sequencing platform to obtain species estimates. We collected 3201 mosquitoes across 58 species (14 genera). Notably, 16 species were collected only through larval samp...