Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Culex sp larvae.png

Mosquito larvae, genus Culex

Original - Mosquito larvae live in pools of stagnant water, where they feed for about one or two weeks before turning into a non-feeding but usually mobile pupa, one of which can be seen near the centre of this group, near the water's surface. The different genera of mosquitos have characteristic larvae, most obviously being distinguished by the structure of the siphons (or lack thereof in the case of the genus Anopheles) that are held up to the surface of the water to allow them to breathe. These larvae are from the genus Culex.

Reason: We have a lot of pictures of insects, but by and large almost all are of the adult stage, while the eggs, larvae and pupae are largely ignored. I think this is a fine image of mosquito larvae. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Articles this image appears in: Mosquito Culex, Siphon (insect anatomy)
Creator: James Gathany, Center for Disease Control

Support as nominator Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support crassic!^[talk] 07:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support. Pretty well done and attractive photo of these little buggers, though a proper macro of just one would probably hold higher encyclopaedic value. The possible pupa, if that's what it is (from image page "It appears that the darker structure at the top center of the image is one pupa."), is quite out of focus. Why's it a png? Could be reuploaded as jpg. And shorter captions please Shoemaker! :-). --jjron (talk) 13:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Bah. PNGs are better.. JPGs add artefacts. And that's a pupa. I knows my mosquito pupas. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:29, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Stick with jpgs. And if the person that took the picture (from the Center for Disease Control) also presumably supplied the original description, then I'm glad you can tell more from this picture re the pupa than he could tell in person - see WP:OR. --jjron (talk) 10:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - The source is not the CDC itself, it's a paer in PLoS med, which does not directly caption it, the description is, in fact, created by the uploader and appears nowhere in that paper in the first place, although much of the information does. I'm sure that Gathany could identify a pupa - they are very obvious, and look exactly like that. But he's not the one doing the description. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 12:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - I agree that it looks like a pupa, but as per my original comment, it's very out of focus, so hard to say for absolute certain (and trying to avoid original research). I was mainly making the point that having what is apparently the pupa there wasn't really increasing value. --jjron (talk) 04:19, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        Sorry, I have flu and am not as with it as I should be. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:17, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        Ah, I wasn't very clear on why I was mentioning the pupa anyway, amongst the other stuff. --jjron (talk) 07:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support VERY interesting view. Spinach Dip 07:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Richard Bartz (talk) 23:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Culex sp larvae.png MER-C 06:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]