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Nematocera

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Nematocera

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Also known as Thread-horns, nematoceran, nematocerans

thumb|Swarming nematocera flies. The Nematocera (nemato+cera meaning "thread-horns") are a suborder of elongated flies with thin, segmented antennae and mostly aquatic larvae. This group is paraphyletic, containing all flies except for those of the suborder Brachycera (the name meaning "short-horns"), which includes species such as the housefly or the common fruit fly. Thus, the equivalent clade to Nematocera would be the whole of Diptera, with Brachycera as a "subclade". Families in Nematocera include mosquitoes, crane flies, gnats, black flies, and multiple families commonly known as midges.

OverviewAI-generated

Nematocera is a taxon within the animal kingdom, classified under the phylum Arthropoda and class Insecta. It belongs to the order Diptera and the family Limoniidae. The scientific name is Nematocera Meigen, 1818. While GBIF lists its rank as genus, WoRMS identifies it as a suborder with an accepted status. The common name for this group is muggen.

The habitat includes marine, brackish, and freshwater environments. Records from iDigBio indicate presence in Germany and the United States, with specimens held by institutions such as LACM, UAM, USNM, UCMP, and YPM. The taxon has 14,688 occurrence records in GBIF, 9,701 records in iDigBio, and 60,106 entries in PubMed.

Synthesized by Vinony from 27 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, GBIF, PubMed, Gbif Occ, WoRMS, iDigBio, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Species

muggen

Nematocera

GENUS

  1. KingdomAnimalia
  2. PhylumArthropoda
  3. ClassInsecta
  4. OrderDiptera
  5. FamilyLimoniidae
Habitatmarine, brackish, freshwater
Observations recorded14,688

via GBIF

Museum specimens

Specimen records
9,701
With media
122
Family
Limoniidae
Collections
LACM, UAM, USNM, UCMP, YPM
Recorded in
Germany, United States

Research

60,106 papers

via PubMed

~6 min read

Encyclopedic overview

4 sections
Contents
  • Phylogeny
  • Families
  • References
  • External links

thumb|Swarming nematocera flies. The Nematocera (nemato+cera meaning "thread-horns") are a suborder of elongated flies with thin, segmented antennae and mostly aquatic larvae. This group is paraphyletic, containing all flies except for those of the suborder Brachycera (the name meaning "short-horns"), which includes species such as the housefly or the common fruit fly. Thus, the equivalent clade to Nematocera would be the whole of Diptera, with Brachycera as a "subclade". Families in Nematocera include mosquitoes, crane flies, gnats, black flies, and multiple families commonly known as midges.

The nematoceran imago typically have elongated bodies and legs, and many species have relatively long abdomens. They also have fairly long, fine, finely-jointed antennae; in many species, such as most mosquitoes, the female antennae are more or less threadlike, but the males have spectacularly feather-like or plumose antennae.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Nematocera” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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