THE CRANE-FLIES OF NEW YORK 



PART II. BIOLOGY AND PHYLOGENYi 



Charles Paul Alexander 



A preliminary classification of the immature stages of the Tipiilidae and 

 related families, suggested to the writer by Dr. J. G. Needham in 1911, 

 is presented in this memoir. But few of the sixty-odd famihes of Diptera, 

 and comparatively few species of the Tipulidae, have as yet been studied 

 from this viewpoint, and therefore the arrangement herein adopted must 

 be considered as tentative. The majority of the specimens used in the 

 study were reared in New York State, the crane-fly fauna of which is 

 typical of a great area thruout northeastern North America. In 1913, 

 thru the kindness of Dr. Charles D. Woods and Dr. Edith M. Patch, 

 the writer was enabled to continue his investigations in Maine. 



It is the writer's purpose to outline the morphological characters avail- 

 able for the classification of the larvae and the pupae, and to give 

 preliminary keys for the separation of the various groups; such keys will, 

 of necessity, require constant revision or complete remodeUng with the 

 accession of new hfe-history material, but it is at least hoped that they 

 may furnish a basis for future investigation. The most important work on 

 the European fauna, that of Theodor Behng (1873 to 1887) ,2 is rendered 

 incomplete by the total lack of illustration, the insufficiency of description 

 of the details of the larval head, and the artificial nature of the keys. 

 That this difficulty in using Beling's figureless descriptions is not confined 

 to the writer is shown by the following criticism by one of his fellow- 

 countrymen (Czizek, 1911:7): 



" Leider fehlen uns bis jetzt fast vollstandig gute Abbildungen der Larven und Puppen, 

 ein fiihlbarer Mangel auch in Beling's Abhandlungen, da die genaueste Beschreibimg das 

 Bild nie ganz zu ersetzen vermag." 



It is intended to include in this paper the following material: 

 1. Descriptions of all new life-history material available, with notes 

 on the biology and occurrence of the species. 



'Part I of The Criine-Flies of AVic York, dealing with distribution and taxonomy of the adult flies, was 

 published in 1919 as Memoir 25 of the Cornell Univers'ty Agricultural Experiment Station. 

 2 Dates in parenthesis refer to Bibliography and licfircnccs Cited, page 1019. 



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