ABSTRACT
If Orson Welles in his famous broadcast had announced, not that the Martians had landed in New Jersey, but that a certain mosquito from Africa had arrived on the American continent, there would have been no public alarm. Although the species has hitherto been reported from Algeria and Morocco, and from Southern Arabia as well, its principal home is the African tropical belt, extending from the southern border of the Sahara Desert south to the Zambesi River. It is the scourge of Central Africa, a carrier of a serious and often fatal type of malaria, sometimes complicated by the so-called "black-water" fever. An airplane, perhaps, which a few hours before had left West Africa, landed on the coast of Brazil, and when its door was opened the unwanted immigrant flew forth undetected, to begin the colonization of a new continent. In 1942, the gambiae started on another invasion from its home in Africa-this time in a different direction.
