buffalo gnats

• Buffalo gnats feed on blood of cattle, horses, sheep, goats, poultry, other livestock and wild mammals and birds.
• they have squat bodies and humped thorax with broad wings. usually they have 11 rounded segments.
• females are dichoptic and males are holoptic eyes.
• simulium damnosum has a mean incubation period of 16 days.
• pupation takes place underwater in a cocoon that is firmly attached to shallowly covered objects as rocks
• adult females are anautogenous, requiring a blood meal to obtain the protein necessary to mature their eggs.
• Adults are predominantly diurnal and are particularly active during morning and evening in warm, cloudy weather.
• adults are strong fliers and are highly responsive in carbon dioxide and other host animal odours.
• onchocerca gutterosa may be transmitted to cattle and onchocerca cervicales to horses, causing bovine and equine onchocerciasis.
• black flies may transmit the viruses causing eastern equine encephalitis and vesicular stomatitis in horse and cattle.
• In NOrth America, black flies may transmit various species of protozoa of the genus Leucocytozoon to turkeys and ducks/
• Simuliidae are particularly important as vectors of the filaroid nematode Onchocerca volvulus, which causes river blindness in humans in Africa, Central and South America.
• similium arcticum, major livestock pest in western canada.
• simulium benustum and simulium vittatum may be common and widespread pest livestock, being particularly common in jUNE AND jULY.
• Simulium pecuarum the southern buffalo gnat may cause losses in cattle in the Mississipi vallet.