__NOTOC__ Limnephilidae is a family of

caddisflies The caddisflies, or order Trichoptera, are a group of insects with aquatic larvae and terrestrial adults. There are approximately 14,500 described species, most of which can be divided into the suborders Integripalpia and Annulipalpia on the ...

with about 100 genera. They belong to the main lineage of case-constructing caddisflies, the

Integripalpia The Integripalpia are a suborder of Trichoptera The caddisflies, or order Trichoptera, are a group of insects with aquatic larvae and terrestrial adults. There are approximately 14,500 described species, most of which can be divided into th ...

or tube-case caddisflies. The Limnephilidae is one of the most species-rich Trichoptera families of northern

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...

regions, but only a few are known from

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

areas and the Southern Hemisphere. For this reason they are often known as northern caddisflies.

Description and ecology

The adults are usually brown in colour, often with narrow mottled or patterned forewings and much broader, transparent hindwings. The aquatic

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e construct portable cases from a wide variety of

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

and

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...

materials, sometimes even

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class G ...

shells. Cases of young larvae often looking completely different from those of larger

instar An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or ...

s. Larvae tend to be

eruciform Eruciform (literally: "caterpillar-shaped") is the entomological term describing a certain class of shapes of insect larvae. Origin and application The word ''eruciform'' literally means "caterpillar-shaped" (from Latin "eruca", a caterpilla ...

(with a thickset head and

thorax The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...

), rather slow-moving, and usually feed by browsing algae or scavenging animal remains. They

pupa A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in thei ...

te within the larval case, the pupa swimming to the surface before flying away as an adult. For most species the life cycle is completed within one year. The family includes one extraordinary aberrant genus, '' Enoicyla'', whose larvae are

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

, living among moss and leaf litter. The females of ''Enoicyla'' have only vestigial wings and are flightless. File:Anabolia.nervosa.larva.jpg, Larval case of '' Anabolia nervosa'' File:Limnephilus.flavicornis.larva.jpg, Larval case of '' Limnephilus flavicornis'' File:Limnephilus.stigma.larva.jpg, Larval case of '' Limnephilus stigma'' File:L7 Suvoljubatska reka 2 Glyphotaelius pellucidus.jpeg, Larval case of '' Glyphotaelius pellucidus''

Systematics

The Limnephilidae are divided among the four subfamilies listed here (with some notable genera also given). A few genera are not presently assignable to subfamily. * Dicosmoecinae ** '' Ironoquia'' * Drusinae ** ''

Drusus Drusus may refer to: * Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Drusus) (10 BC–AD 54), Roman emperor from 41 to 54 * Drusus Caesar (AD 8–33), adoptive grandson of Roman emperor Tiberius * Drusus Julius Caesar (14 BC–AD 23), son of Roman emperor Tiberiu ...

'' * Limnephilinae ** '' Anabolia'' ** '' Chaetopteryx'' ** '' Enoicyla'' ** '' Glyphotaelius'' ** ''

Limnephilus ''Limnephilus'' is a genus of caddisflies in the family Limnephilidae. There are over 180 species of ''Limnephilus'', described between 1824 and 1999. Several species of ''Limnephilus'' are endangered, including '' Limnephilus perpusillus'', ...

'' ** '' Parachiona'' ** '' Chilostigma'' * Pseudostenophylacinae ** '' Aplatyphylax'' ** '' Astenophylina'' ** '' Astratodina'' ** '' Phylostenax'' ** '' Pseudostenophylax'' * ''

Incertae sedis ' () or ''problematica'' is a term used for a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Alternatively, such groups are frequently referred to as "enigmatic taxa". In the system of open nomenclature, uncertain ...

'' ** '' Allomyia'' ** '' Manophylax'' ** '' Moselyana'' ** '' Pedomoecus''

References

*Chinery, Michael ''Collins Guide to the Insects of Britain and Western Europe'' 1986 (Reprinted 1991)

External links

Family description
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1949962 Trichoptera families Taxa named by Friedrich August Rudolph Kolenati Integripalpia