Preliminary Study on Host Use and Phylogenetic Analysis of Corethrella nippon in Taiwan

This study investigated frog-biting dipteran species using newly designed frog-calling traps in Taiwan. The trap effectively collected specimens from both families, Culicidae and Corethrellidae, demonstrating its utility. Host preference analysis revealed that Odorrana swinhoana (Boulenger, 1903) and Kurixalus eiffingeri (Boettger, 1895) were most frequently associated with collected specimens of Corethrellidae. Additionally, the corethrellids were predominantly attracted to a sound frequency around 2200 to 2700 Hz. Then, DNA barcoding was also conducted on the four collected species of Culicidae: Armigeres subalbatus (Coquillett, 1898), Uranotaenia nivipleura Leicester, 1908, Ur. macferlanei Edwards, 1914, and Mimomyia luzonensis (Ludlow, 1905), and the mitochondrial genome of Corethrella nippon Miyagi 1980 was first sequenced and annotated. Mitogenome-based phylogenetic analysis confirmed that C. nippon formed a clade with Corethrella condita Borkent, 2008. In our analysis, family Corethrellidae clustered with Culicidae; however, the inter-family phylogenetic relationships within Culicoidea appeared paraphyletic, particularly concerning family Chaoboridae. Future studies should explore a greater variety of frog species across more diverse regions and use other genomic datasets beyond the mitogenome to infer a more robust deep topology at the superfamily level and further broaden our understanding of host preference.