Welcome!

This is your place for finding researchers, news, and other resources regarding Chironomidae, or non-biting midges. This site continues to undergo changes in organization in order to make this site more useful and accessible. The webmaster would appreciate receiving any suggestions for further improving this site. Your participation is crucial - this is your community, and your resource.

With this in mind, several requests. Please let the webmaster know of anyone who should be removed from the worker directory, or have had their directory information (e.g., addresses, contact information, interests) changed. Second, please provide information regarding meetings, conferences, and research projects involving Chironomidae. Finally, to enhance the visual appeal and communicate to others what we do, it would be greatly appreciated if you can submit photographs of midges of all life stages for inclusion in the Home Page. Proper credit, citation and copyright protection will, of course, be given. (Image upper left of a male Tanytarsus gracilentus (Holmgren, 1883) - © 2004, Torbjørn Ekrem, used with permission; image to the right is Chironomus anthracinus Zetterstedt, 1860, swarming at Lake Esrum, Denmark, in late April - © 2004, Klaus Brodersen, used with permission).

What's new?

Below are links of events and meetings, newsletters, important publications, research web sites and other recent items of interest to the Chironomid community. If you know of something that would interest the chironomid researcher, please let the webmaster know about it so that it can be included. [Image right is a male of Gymnometriocnemus brumalis taken on 20 January 2004 in East Sussex, UK (© 2004, Patrick Roper, used with permission). "We were felling some trees on a fairly cold winter's day and many of these insects (which are common here in the colder months) landed on the cut stumps as soon as the trees were down."]

• Some remarkable footage of midge emergence (posted on You Tube) photographed by Ralph Cutter, who made a DVD educating flyfishing enthusiasts about aqautic insects. (added April 2008).
• An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America, 4th Edition, is now available. The numerous errors contained in the first run (not the fault of the editors) have been corrected by the publisher. OWNERS OF 1ST PRINTING ARE ELIGIBLE TO RECEIVE A FREE REPLACEMENT (ISBN 978-0-7575-5049-2) FROM THE PUBLISHER BY CALLING KENDALL/HUNT'S CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT AT (01) 800-228-0810. (added March 2008).
• Torbjørn Ekrem has scanned all the back issues of Chironomus (thank you!), which can now be download in the Chironomus Newsletter section. (added February 2008).
• Two publications from Apollo Books - Nilsson: Aquatic Insects of North Europe. CD-Rom edition.; and Wichard et al.: Biological Atlas of Aquatic Insects - should be of interest to the Chironomidae community. More information - and links to the publisher - in the book section. (added January 2008).
• Wolfgang Wülker's 2003 Thienemann lecture, The Role of Chromosomes in Chironomid Systematics, Ecology and Phylogeny, is available for viewing. (added December 2007)
• Chironomus 20 is now available for download. Among the numerous entries are articles about Mary Sublette, Kaare Aagaard, and Ernst Josef Fittkau; summaries of the 16th International Chironomid Symposium held in Madeira and the 8th European Subfossil Chironomid Workshop held in Iceland; useful reviews of some major new chironomid publications; and Odwin Hoffrichter's update to current bibliography of chironomid research. (added November 2007)
• Martin Spies' 2006 application (Case 3344) to the ICZN has become officially sanctioned and permanent: "The Commission has ruled that the generic names Pseudorthocladius Goetghebuer, 1943 and Mesosmittia Brundin, 1956 for two widespread genera of non-biting midges are conserved by the suppression of Pseudorthocladius Edwards, 1932. Pseudorthocladius Edwards, 1932 is a senior homonym of Pseudorthocladius Goetghebuer, 1943, but has not been used for the last 50 years, being replaced with Mesosmittia Brundin, 1956." (added October 2007)
• P.H. Langton and L.C.V. Pinder have published through the Freshwater Biological Association Keys to the Adult Male Chironomidae of Britain and Ireland, in 2 volumes (ISBN 978-0-900386-75-6; ISSN 0367-1887) (added August 2007).
• Henk Vallenduuk and Henk Moller Pillot have published a new book on the Chironomidae Larvae of the Netherlands, focusing on chironomid ecology and the Tanypodinae (added July 2007).

Older information...

• You may download Pete Cranston's summary (650KB PDF) of the 16th International Chironomid Symposium from the Antenna newsletter . More photos of the symposium (and vacation) can be found at the official website: http://www.uma.pt/chiro.symposium/ (added June 2007).
• Contributions to the Systematics and Ecology of Aquatic Diptera: A Tribute to Ole Sæther.  The Caddis Press. Columbus, Ohio. vi + 358 pages. Edited by Trond Andersen, this has been recently been published by Caddis Press. From my purchased copy, I listed the submitted papers to this festschrift (added June 2007).
• An identification guide by Brooks, Langdon, and Heiri for fossil chironomid head capsules has recently been published by the Quaternary Research Association (added June 2007)
• Request for "paleo-help" - can you identify this subfossil tanytarsine? (added October 2006).
• Jon Martin has updated his Chironomus databases (added June 2006):
  1. Names used in the genus Chironomus and their current status;
  2. Cytology and larval morphology database for North American Chironomus species; and
  3. Cytology and larval morphology database for New Zealand Chironomus species
  
• Len Ferrington's super cool research team studying supercooling for chironomids has updated their web page with more news on results as well as details and pictures of sampling and rearing techniques. (Added February 2006). [© [Four photos right ©2005, 2006 - Len Ferrington, used with permission). "[The first photo] is a ... brachypterous female of Diamesa leona on a piece of shelf ice. I took the photo on 22 Dec 2004, while doing field work in the upper Arkansas River basin in Colorado at 8950 ft (2728 m) elevation, with air temps at -16 C!! The female was very active in between ice layers along the edges of the river."]
• Jon Martin (Genetics Department, University of Melborne) requests European and Japanese specimens of Einfeldia dissidens for genetic work. See the "Requests for Help and Information" menu item to the left.
• An updated list of Dr. Ole Sæther publications (including a few that can be downloaded from the web) is now available (added January 2005).
• Fourth edition of the ICZN (1999) is freely accessible online at http://www.iczn.org/iczn/index.jsp (added January 2005).
• Martin Spies and Ole Sæther's new publication "Notes and recommendations on taxonomy and nomenclature of Chironomidae (Diptera)" in Zootaxa 752 is freely downloadable as a PDF from http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2004f/zt00752.pdf. The authors also announce that Chironomidae has been added to the Fauna Europaea database, freely accessible at http://www.faunaeur.org/. The associated CD-ROM and paper publications have been announced, but have not yet appeared (added December 2004).
• 2003 XV International Symposium abstracts are available on-line at http://www.entomology.umn.edu/midge/XVSymposium.htm (added December 2004).
• Klaus Brodersen's beautiful pictures of swarming Chironomus anthricinus from Denmark and West Greenland (added November 2004). To the right is an example (© 2004, Klaus Brodersen, used with permission).
• Torbjørn Ekrem's web site "A world revision of the genera Zavrelia and Stempellinella (Diptera: Chironomidae)", focuses on the taxonomy, systematics and zoogeography of these two chironomid genera. Through taxonomic revisions, and description of new species and immature stages, identification keys for all life stages will be erected, and morphological as well as molecular characters will be used to infer the phylogenetic relationship of the species in the two genera (added October 2004).
• Larval head capsules of European Micropsectra, Paratanytarsus, and Tanytarsus (Diptera: Chironomidae; Tanytarsini). Collaboration between Torbjørn Ekrem (Trondheim, Norway), Oliver Heiri (Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Endree Willassen (Bergen, Norway). This project is to figure and describe the larval head capsules of the European species in the above genera, with special emphasis on characters available to palaeolimnologists (added October 2004).
• Photoscan of the attendees at the 15th Chironomid Symposium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (added April 2004)

Last updated: Tuesday, 22-Apr-2008 (EB)