The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, was the only insect introduced to Apterra. Arriving unintentionally inside a poorly-filtered water tank, they were an annoyance to humans and animals alike. By the time the planet was abandoned, rapid evolution had already begun within this species. Specifically, the lack of nectar-bearing flowers necessitated a change in lifestyle. Mature male mosquitoes, unlike their mates, do not feed on blood. They are exclusively nectarivorous. This meant, in simple terms, that male mosquitoes on Apterra had no food source for the entirety of their adult lives.
One group’s solution was to feast on plankton and detritus in the days leading up to pupation, consuming enough nutrients to sustain it for no more than a day once it emerges and takes flight. The females of this species have a more standard life cycle, retaining the ability to feed on the blood of the billions of rats roaming Apterra’s plains. The males, on the other hand, now have useless mouthparts; developing a fully-formed proboscis would be a waste of precious calories. Their wings have grown proportionally to the body in order to save energy by gliding short distances, while the animal as a whole is some 30% smaller.
Another difference that has emerged between the sexes is their rate of growth. Males take upwards of 30 days to build their energy stores before pupating, while females can go from egg to adult in as little as a third of that time. As a result, brothers and sisters of the same clutch emerge at different times, which has the added benefit of preventing inbreeding.
Aside from these changes, the life cycle of this species is not vastly different from its ancestors. Females emerge and promptly seek a meal, filling up on the blood of a nearby rat (or rarely a kiwi). The male, after filling his stomach for the last time, pupates in the water and flies off in search of a mate. He may travel up to a kilometer in this journey; he knows he won’t be getting any second chances, so he searches for the healthiest, fittest partner he can find. The female, on the other hand, rarely travels over 100 meters from her birthplace, as she has plenty of time to wait for a passing male to find her. She may live upwards of a month, feeding up to a dozen times and laying a clutch promptly after each meal.
At the current moment in history, this is the most common mosquito lineage on all of Apterra. In fact, if the planet’s flora had remained unchanged from the earliest buffalograsses, it is quite likely that this species would have driven all its relatives to extinction in just a few thousand more years. However, Apterra’s plants are undergoing their first great radiation, and the number of mosquito species is about to explode in turn. Not long from now, new food sources will permit a different type of mosquito to dominate, and time will tell if the semelparous forms will persist.