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Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus?

Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus?

Can you tell which of these mosquitoes is Aedes aegypti and which is Aedes albopictus? Even for professional entomologists, visually identifying wild-caught mosquitoes to species requires rearing them to either fourth instar larvae or adults. A new set of improvements to a DNA-testing method developed by the CDC, however, will enable faster identification of either (or both) species’ presence in a collected sample of first instar larvae. And, to answer the question, that’s Ae. albopictus on the left and Ae. aegypti on the right. (Photo credits: James Gathany, CDC Public Health Image Library)

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