The bluetongue is a serious vector-borne viral disease that affect wild and domestic ruminants. It is transmitted by midges belonging to the genus of Culicoides which count more than 1350 species. Since 1998, the disease has been spread in Europe and North Africa in 2000 including Algeria, while Korea reported serotype 1 of the virus on 2015. To know further about the existence and distribution of Culicoides species in Algeria, adult midges were collected from 17 different regions in Algeria from 2009 to 2015. The Interactive Identification Key of Culicoides (IIKC) has been used, followed by molecular identification by the sequencing of partial COI gene. At least 21 genetically different species have been identified. Among them, at least 5 potential virus vector species are present in Algeria. This study provides important insights for the understanding of genetic diversity of Culicoides and the existing potential of bluetongue spread in Algeria.

Recently, climate change has been increasingly reported to be associated with vector-borne diseases including West Nile Virus, avian poxvirus, bluetongue virus. These diseases, which are of medical and veterinary importance, are known to affect the health status of wildlife. In this sense, it is vital to understand the distribution of mosquitoes and biting midges as the disease-vectors in the habitat of wildlife. In order to do this, nocturnal insects were collected using CDC Mini Night Traps (cat. no. 2836BXQ, BioQuip, CA, USA) in the coniferous and deciduous forest near the ponds in National Institute of Ecology (NIE) on the weekdays from June to September. As a result, 920 mosquitoes belonging to 13 species of 7 genus and 5,129 biting midges belonging to 8 species of Culicoides were collected in total. For mosquitoes, Aedes vexans nipponii and Culex orientalis were the predominant species consisting about two thirds of all the mosquitoes. For biting midges, Culicoides arakawae was the prevalent species present and 97.3% of this kind appeared to have preference to feed on birds. The number of mosquitoes collected remained relatively constant as opposed to the number of biting midges which showed the tendency to fluctuate - the second or third week of each month had the highest number of Culicoides spp. Forest ecology had more diverse distribution of species than livestock farms and reflected the abundance of birds in NIE. In addition, further evaluation of the effect of environment, such as climatic factors, on the ecology of these disease vectors would be required.

Recently in the course of examining Korean diptera, we found a species, Atrichopogon femoralis Tokunaga placed in the subfamily Forcipomyinae Meigen. Forcipomyinae is most specious in the family Ceratogonidae, and comprise about 5,566 extant species placed in 103 genera in four subfamilies (Borkent and Wirth, 1997) from almost all the zoogeographic regions. Genus Atrichopogon is second largest genus, with about 520 species (Borkent, 2012). Currently 39 valid species of 6 genera belonging to 3 subfamily are known in Korea. The specimens were collected from intermountain area and reservoir of Chungcheongnam-do, Cheonan-si, and Gyeongsangbuk-do, Gyeongju-si by black light trap (BLT) in 2013. We report an occurrence Atrichopogon femoralis Tokunaga for the first time in Korea, and of which diagnosis, description, distribution and photo images are presented. For further researches, we also provide a key to genera of Korean Ceratopogonidae.