<b>Recent establishment of an invasive mosquito and an emerging avian malaria system on Rangitāhua, a remote island</b>

Rangitāhua, approximately 1000 km northeast of mainland Aotearoa New Zealand, has had limited prior mosquito monitoring and no assessment of avian parasites. We conducted an integrated field and molecular study to identify mosquito species, assess haemosporidian parasite prevalence in mosquitoes and birds, and evaluate mosquito feeding ecology.

We report the first observation of introduced mosquitoes from the <i>Culex</i> <i>pipiens</i> complex - <i>Culex quinquefasciatus. </i>This is alongside the endemic <i>Culex pervigilans</i>. Four Haemosporidian species were detected in birds and mosquitoes, which align with <i>Plasmodium elongatum</i>, <i>P. vaughani</i>, <i>P. relictum</i> and <i>P. matutinum,</i> although only the latter exactly matched sequences in public databases. <i>Plasmodium</i> prevalence was high in tūī (<i>Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae</i>) and introduced passerines (<i>Turdus merula</i> and <i>T. philomelos</i>), whereas no haemosporidian infections were detected in kākāriki (<i>Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae</i>), although sample sizes were limited.