The head comprises the eyes, the antennae and the mouth parts which surround the ventral mouth. A membranous neck separates the head from the thorax. To feed itself, the larva turns its head through 180°, in order that the head is just under the surface of the water. It filters and ingests food particles pushed towards the mouth by the surface currents brought about by the movements of the mouth parts. 

The thorax is made up of three non-individualized segments.

The abdomen, cylindrical, is comprised of nine segments. The first seven carry hardened dorsal plates and bunches of hairs characteristic of the Anopheles mosquito. These hairs help to maintain the larva just under the surface of the water, in the typical position of Anopheles mosquitoes, parallel to the surface of the water, dorsal side upwards. The eighth abdominal segment has two breathing orifices on the dorsal side, the stigmata, which open directly at the level of a spiracular plate. The absence of a respiratory siphon differentiates the Anopheles mosquito from the other species. The respiratory stigmata are opened at the surface to enable the air for the tracheal system to be renewed and closed by valves when diving. Respiration is aerial. The last abdominal segment carries the anus. 

The head   has two large compound eyes, a pair of antennae with fifteen joints and covered with numerous long hairs in the male, less numerous and shorter in the female. The trunk, or proboscis, comprises a special mouth part, the labium, forming a flexible gutter surrounding the other piercing mouth parts in the female: the hypopharynx, the two mandibles and the two maxillaries. Certain of these mouth parts form two independent canals in which fluids circulate in well-defined and opposing directions compared one with the other. The largest is the alimentary canal, delimited by the labium folded as a gutter. The mosquito sucks the blood from the host through it. The finest is the salivary duct, situated inside the hypopharynx: the saliva is injected into this duct and circulates from the salivary glands of the mosquito to the distal part of the hypopharynx, the end the furthest from the point of the bite in the host. These morphological characteristics enable the female anopheline mosquito at the same time to, during the bite, ingest a voluminous blood meal and inject with its saliva the infecting stage (sporozoite) of the Plasmodium. Two maxillary sensors are situated on either side of the proboscis. In the female, they are the same size as the proboscis. In the male, they are longer and the distal part is swollen like a club.

The thorax is formed of three segments each of which carries a pair of legs. The first is reduced. It is the second, highly developed and containing powerful wing muscles, that are fitted with a pair of wings. On the third segment there are a pair of halteres or balancers, which are tantamount to a pair of atrophied rear wings which play a role in the equilibrium of the flight. The six legs, long and slender, have nine joints. The wings present a good number of light- and dark-colored scales: they are arranged on the costal edge and are characteristic of Anopheles mosquitoes.

The abdomen is made up of ten segments, seven of which are highly visible. Each segment is made up of a chitinous dorsal plate and a membrane-linked ventral plate which allows the abdomen to dilate during a blood meal and during the preparation of egg-laying in the ovaries. The last three segments hold the anus and the genital appendices, or genitalia.
The proboscis-head-thorax-abdomen ensemble is in the same alignment. At rest, this alignment forms an acute angle in relation to the support characteristic of the Anopheles mosquito.