Diptera (Curran, 1928)

Rogers, D. Christopher & Cruz-Rivera, Edwin, 2021, A preliminary survey of the inland aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, Journal of Natural History 55 (13 - 14), pp. 799-850 : 830-831

Diptera

Aquatic flies are complex and amazingly diverse globally. The first inland aquatic invertebrate ever reported from the US Virgin Islands is the Ephydrid shorefly Paralimna thomae ( Wiedemann, 1830) ( Ale-Rocha and Mathis 2015) . The flies of the US Virgin Islands were first surveyed by Curran (1928) and he reported several aquatic families, including Chironomidae , Culicidae , Ephydridae , Stratiomyidae , Syrphidae , Tabanidae , and Tipulidae .

The Chironomidae of the US Virgin Islands were studied also by Curry and Curry (1971) and Miller (1971). Flemings and Walsh (1966) reviewed the Culicidae, Borkent and Spinelli (2007) reviewed the Ceratopogonidae , and Fairchild (1966) reviewed the Tabanidae , with some Puerto Rico records from Curran (1928) and Medina Gaud and Martorell (1974). The Chironomidae of the USVI include species in the genera Chironomus , Glyptotendipes , Metriocnemus , Microtendipes , Nanocladius , Pentaneura , Phaenopsectra , Polypedilum , and Tanytarsus ( Curran 1928; Curry and Curry 1971; Miller 1971).

Cazorla et al. (2018) report the ceratopogonids (biting midges) Bezzia (Bezzia) nobilis (Winnertz, 1852) and Forcipomyia (Thyridomyia) nana (Macafie, 1939) from the ‘Virgin Islands’, but it is unclear whether their records come from the US or British Virgin Islands.

The psychodid genus Neurosystasis has two species: N. terminalis (Satchell, 1955) from Jamaica and N. amplipenna (Knab, 1914) from Cuba, with the later species breeding in bromeliad phytotelmata ( Quate and Brown 2004). Similarly, Arisemus has many species reported from the Caribbean ( Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St Lucia , and Martinique) and Australopericoma caudata (Satchell, 1955) is reported from Jamaica. But as yet there are no records of any of these genera from the Virgin Islands.

Although there has been an understandable focus in the literature on medically important groups, surprisingly little else has been reported on the aquatic flies of the US Virgin Islands (e.g. Kenney et al. 2017). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Arbovirus Catalogue (https://wwwn.cdc.gov/arbocat/ accessed 31 December 2020), there are 59 mosquito transmitted viruses reported from the Caribbean Islands. Some 28 mosquito species are known from the Virgin Islands ( Curran 1928; Belkin et al. 1965, 1970; Flemings and Walsh 1966; Bram 1967; Stone 1969; Kenney et al. 2017; Seger et al. 2019), but only a few are known to transmit diseases to humans. Curry and Curry (1971) also provide records of Chaoboridae and Ceratopogonidae from St. John and St. Croix, and Belkin et al. (1965, 1970) discuss Dixidae and Chaoboridae for the region. The Simuliidae of the Neotropical bioregion were thoroughly reviewed and revised in Coscarón and Coscarón Arias (2007), presenting only four species from Puerto Rico, and none from the Virgin Islands; we suspect there are more species to find.

Of the 18 aquatic dipteran families listed for Puerto Rico by Gutiérrez-Fonsec et al. (2013), we found six families, plus two not mentioned in that work.