Typical Nematocera: male and female mosquito. Note the difference in the antennae
Mosquito larva, showing the distinct head
The Nematocera (the name means "thread-horns") are a suborder of elongated flies with thin, segmented antennae and mostly aquatic larvae. Major families in the suborder include the mosquitoes, crane flies, gnats, black flies, and a group of families described as midges.
The Nematocera typically have fairly long, fine, finely-jointed antennae. In this they differ from the most familiar flies, the suborder Brachycera (the name means "short-horns"), which includes the house flies, blow flies and many similar flies; Brachycera generally have short, stubby antennae. In many species, such as most mosquitoes, the female antennae are more or less threadlike, but the males have spectacularly plumose antennae.
The larvae of most families of Nematocera are aquatic, either free-swimming, rock-dwelling, plant-dwelling, or luticolous. Some families however, are not aquatic; for instance the Tipulidae tend to be soil-dwelling and the Mycetophilidae feed on fungi such as mushrooms. Unlike most of the Brachycera, the larvae of Nematocera have distinct heads with mouthparts that may be modified for filter feeding or chewing, depending on their lifestyles.
The pupae are orthorrhaphous which means that adults emerge from the pupa through a straight, longitudinal seam in the dorsal surface of the pupal cuticle.
The bodies and legs of most adult Nematocera are elongated, and many species have relatively long abdomens.
Males of many species form mating swarms like faint pillars of smoke, competing for females that visit the cloud of males to find a mate.
Families
These 69 families belong to the suborder Nematocera:[2][3][4]
Anisopodidae Knab, 1912 - wood gnats or window-gnats
Axymyiidae Shannon, 1921
Bibionidae Fleming, 1821 - march flies and love bugs
Blephariceridae Loew, 1861 - net-winged midges
Bolitophilidae Winnertz, 1863
Canthyloscelididae Enderlein, 1912
Cecidomyiidae Newman, 1835 - gall midges or gall gnats
Ceratopogonidae Newman, 1834 - biting midges
Chaoboridae Newman, 1834 - phantom midges
Chironomidae Newman, 1834 - chironomids or nonbiting midges
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Savage, Jade; Borkent, Art; Brodo, Fenja; Cumming, Jeffrey M.; et al. (2019). "Diptera of Canada. In: Langor DW, Sheffield CS (Eds) The Biota of Canada – A Biodiversity Assessment. Part 1: The Terrestrial Arthropods". ZooKeys. 819. doi:10.3897/zookeys.819.27625.
^ ab
Pape, Thomas; Blagoderov, Vladimir; Mostovski, Mikhail B. (2011). Zhang, Zhi-Qiang (ed.). "Order Diptera Linnaeus, 1758. In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness" (PDF). Zootaxa. 3148. ISBN 978-1-86977-849-1. ISSN 1175-5326.
Borror, D. J., DeLong, D. M., Triplehorn, C. A.(1976) Fourth edition. An introduction to the study of insects. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York, Chicago. ISBN 0-03-088406-3
Arnett, R. H. Jr. (2000) Second edition. American insects. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Londres,New York, Washington, D. C. ISBN 0-8493-0212-9
External links
Image Gallery from Diptera.info
Gnats (Nematocera)
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Extant Diptera families
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Subclass: Pterygota
Infraclass: Neoptera
Superorder: Endopterygota
Suborder Nematocera
Axymyiomorpha
Axymyiidae
Culicomorpha
Culicoidea
Dixidae (meniscus midges)
Corethrellidae (frog-biting midges)
Chaoboridae (phantom midges)
Culicidae (mosquitoes)
Chironomoidea
Thaumaleidae (solitary midges)
Simuliidae (black flies)
Ceratopogonidae (biting midges)
Chironomidae (non-biting midges)
Blephariceromorpha
Blephariceridae (net-winged midges)
Deuterophlebiidae (mountain midges)
Nymphomyiidae
Bibionomorpha
Bibionoidea
Bibionidae (march flies, lovebugs)
Anisopodoidea
Anisopodidae (wood gnats)
Sciaroidea (fungus gnats)
Bolitophilidae
Diadocidiidae
Ditomyiidae
Keroplatidae
Mycetophilidae
Sciaridae (dark-winged fungus gnats)
Cecidomyiidae (gall midges)
Psychodomorpha
Scatopsoidea
Canthyloscelidae
Perissommatidae
Scatopsidae (minute black scavenger flies, or dung midges)
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English Journal
Anion inhibition studies of a beta carbonic anhydrase from the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae.
A description of a new species of Ptychoptera Meigen, 1803 from the Shirakami Mountains, Honshu, Japan and some notes on distributions of Japanese species (Diptera, Ptychopteridae)
NAKAMURA Takeyuki
Shirakami-sanchi : bulletin of the Shirakami Institute for Environmental Sciences, Hirosaki University 1, 15-18, 2012-03