Aedes Aegypti - Scientific Name

Scientific Name

The species was first named (as Culex aegypti) in a 1757 publication by Fredric Hasselquist titled Iter Palaestinum ("A Journey to Palestine"). Hasselquist was provided with the names and descriptions by his mentor, Carl Linnaeus. Iter Palaestinum was later translated into German and published in 1762 as Reise nach Palästina. Since the latter is an uncritical reproduction of the former, they are both considered to pre-date the starting point for zoological nomenclature in 1758. Nonetheless, the name Aedes aegypti was frequently used, starting with H. G. Dyar in 1920.

In order to stabilise the nomenclature, a petition to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature was made by P. F. Mattingly, Alan Stone and Kenneth L. Knight in 1962. It also transpired that, although the name Aedes aegypti was universally used for the yellow fever mosquito, Linnaeus had actually described a species now known as Aedes (Ochlerotatus) caspius. In 1964, the commission ruled in favour of the proposal, validating Linnaeus' name, and transferring it to the species for which it was in general use.

The yellow fever mosquito belongs to the tribe Aedini of the dipteran family Culicidae and to the genus Aedes and subgenus Stegomyia. According to one recent analysis, the subgenus Stegomyia of the genus Aedes should be raised to the level of genus. The proposed name change has been ignored by most scientists; at least one scientific journal, the Journal of Medical Entomology, has officially encouraged authors dealing with aedine mosquitoes to continue to use the traditional names, unless they have particular reasons for not doing so.