288 



Food of the 1 may i lies 



The mouth parts of the imagines of most species in Taiiypincc and 

 Chironouiincc are poorly developed, and statements have been pub- 

 lished to the effect that in this stage they do not require food. Miall 

 and Hammond state that the mouth is "almost closed and feeding 

 seems to be impossible." * It is a fact, however, that in almost the 

 whole group the mouth parts are functional ; and that the many species 

 of these groups which may be seen on flower heads during the summer, 

 resort there to procure food is evident from their actions. It is well 

 known that the imagines of many species in Ceratopogonincc re- 

 quire food, as already mentioned in the introductory remarks to this 

 paper, and the mouth parts in this subfamily are well developed. In a 

 previous paper published by the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural 

 History I have recorded an instance of a species, belonging to the 

 aquatic section of this subfamily, attacking a perlid.'j Walker states 

 that the species of Ceratopogonincc which have spinose femora feed 

 upon insects, t but does not indicate whether he had personal knowledge 

 of the fact, or to what particular species he referred. Gravely has re- 

 corded for a species which he refers to Ctilieoidcs, an instance of its 

 sucking blood from a mosquito. § A summary of the published rec- 

 ords of this nature is given by Knab in the Proceedings of the Ento- 

 mological Society of Washington for 1914, volume 16, page 65. 



There are few published records of the food habits of other Clnro- 

 nomidcu, which is possibly due to the fact that the species are but im- 

 perfectly known and the difficulty in identifying most of them is so 

 great that few entomologists pay any attention to the family. 



ACKNOWLKDGMENTS 



In the preparation of this paper I have had to examine much ma- 

 terial belonging to genera and species which do not occur in Illinois, 

 and to the following gentlemen my thanks are due for assistance in sup- 

 plying that material : W. L. McAfee, U. S. Bureau of Biological Sur- 

 vey; J. M. Aldrich, U. S. Bureau of Entomology; E. T. Cresson, Jr., 



*The Harlequin Fly, p. 9. 



tBull. 111. State. Lab. Nat. Hist., Vol. X, Art. IV, p. 21G. 



tinsecta Britannica, Diptera, Vol. o, 1856, p. 207. 



§" Early in December, 1910, when some of the officers of the Indian Museum vis- 

 ited Port Canning, in the Sunderbunds, wc found a mosquito (M/isomijia rossi) on 

 one side of whose abdomen a small Chironomid fly was sitting, evidently imbibing 

 nourishment from it. So tight was its hold that it retained its position when put into 

 spirit, and it was successfully ' cleared ' in sitih. The proboscis of the Chironomid — 

 which appears to belong to the genus Culicoides — was then seen to be well embedded 

 in the tissues of the mosquito, removing all doubt as to the object of the association 

 of the flies together. "—Rec. Ind. Mus., Vol. 6 (1911), p. 45. 



