157 



NOTES ON THE GENUS CLUNIO^- Hal. 

 By a. D. Imms. 



During a short period of work last summer, while occu- 

 pying the University of Birmingham Table at the Biological 

 Laboratory, Port Erin, I met with some larvae of a marine 

 Chironomid, and have subsequently devoted a considerable time 

 to working up what literature there exists upon the marine 

 species of the family. The following notes which I have made 

 upon the genus Clunio may not be perhaps without some value. 

 Our only British species is in urgent need of further investi- 

 gation, and probably, if carefully sought for, will not prove so 

 rare as our present knowledge of it seems to warrant. 



The genus was erected by Haliday in 1855 for a single 

 species, namely Clunio marinus, the males of which he found on 

 the shores of Kerry. It is characterised by the presence of a 

 pair of enormous claspers — a feature which distinguishes it at 

 once from any other Chironomid. In 1856 he recorded stray 

 individuals of the species from Dublin Bay ; in 1872 some ex- 

 amples were taken by Dale on the sea-coast at Hastings. From 

 that time onwards until 1894 no contributions appear to have 

 been made to our knowledge of the insect, and Theobald, in his 



* As far as I have been able to ascertain, the following is a complete 

 bibliography of the genus Clunio : — 



1855. A. H. Haliday. Nat. Hist. Rev. vol. ii. Proc. p. 54, pi. ii. 

 1856. lb., vol. iii. Proc. p. 73. 



1856. J. R. ScHiNER. Ver. Zoo. Bot. Ver. vi. p. 216. 



1864. Fauna Austriaca, Die Fliegen (Diptera). Wien, 



vol. ii. pp. 593-4. 



1872. C. W. Dale. New and Rare British Diptera. Ent. Month. Mag. 

 XX. p. 214. 



1892. F. V. Theobald. An Account of British FHes, pp. 195-6. London. 



1894. G. H. Carpenter. Clunio marimos, Haliday, — A Marine Chirono- 

 mid. Ent. Month. Mag. p. 129. 



1894. R. Chevrel. Sur un Diptere Marin du genre Clunio, Haliday. 

 Arch. Zool. Exp. et Gen. pp. 583-98. 



1897. H. Gadeau de Kerville. Recherches sur les faunes marine et 



maritime de la Normandie, 2e Voyage. Biill. Soc. Rouen, 

 pp. 366-71. 



1898. A. GiARD. Sur I'appareil tracheen de Clunio marinus, Haliday. 



Compte-rendu Assoc, franc. (Congres de Saint-Etienne), l^e partie, 

 p. 299. 



1898. J. J. Kieffer. Description d'un Diptere sous-marin recueilli aux 

 Petites-Dalles (Seine-Inferieure). Bull. Ent. Soc. Franc, pp. 105-8. 



1900. H. Gadeau de Kerville. Description, par M. I'abbe J. J. Kieffer, 

 d'une nouvelle espece de Diptere marin de la famille des Chiro- 

 nomides {Clunio hicolor), et renseignements sur cette espece, 

 decouverte par M. Henri Gadeau de Kerville dans I'anse de Saint- 

 Martin (cote septentrionale du departement de la Manche) et 

 trouvee par M. Rene Chevrel k Saint Briac (lUe-et-Vilaine). 

 Bull. Soc. Rouen, 2 pp. 



