The family of Chironomidae is a group of Diptera insects belonging to the suborder of Nematocera, commonly called “non-biting midges” in the adult stage and “bloodworms” in the larval stage. The Chironomidae are often the most abundant group of macroinvertebrates, in number of species and individuals, encountered in all aquatic environments of freshwater, brackish, terrestrial and even the sea. Likewise, Chironomidae occur in all the continents. The Chironomidae family is divided into 11 sub-families that have diffrent ecological statues. Despite the wealth of data on Chironomidae in the Holarctic region, other parts of the world are poorly studied and few guides to identifying Chironomidae have been produced. This chapter includes a theoretical synthesis on the Chironomidae, it deals with the Biology (life cycle and description of different stages), description of all subfamilies and the ecology of this important family of Diptera.

No abstract

No abstract

Hydrobaenus olfa n. sp. from Algeria is described and illustrated as male, pupal exuviae and larva. The new species is assigned to the genus Hydrobaenus Fries, 1830 according to morphological characters observable in all the three stages, it is easily separated from all the other known species of the genus because of the high number of anal macrosetae on anal lobe of pupa; this character state is actually unknown within all the known species of the Hydrobaenus group, whereas it is observed in other genera within Orthocladiinae as in the genus Propsilocerus Kieffer, 1923. For this reason the description of the genus Hydrobaenus must be emended. This character gives additional evidence to the phylogenetic relationships between the primitive genera of Orthocladiinae.

No abstract

No abstract