PROC. BIOL. SOC. WASH. 91(4), 1978, pp. 798-814 NATURAL HISTORY AND LIFE-CYCLE STAGES OF NOTIPHILA CARINATA (DIPTERA: EPHYDRIDAE) D. L. Deonier, W. N. Mathis, and J. T. Regensburg Abstract. — Adults of Notiphila carinata Loew have been collected in eight states, all east of the Mississippi Valley and within the distribution range of Justicia americana (L.) Vahl, or water willow, the only macrophyte species with which the larvae and puparia have been associated. Adults were ob-served feeding on exposed periphyton on stems and leaves of water willow; females deposited eggs in irregular masses of 3-20 on folded or curled leaves on or near the water or mud surface. The incubation period for 35 eggs ranged from 1 to 3 days at 18-24°C. The first larval stadium was not pre-cisely measured, but it was definitely more than 3 days in laboratory cultures. The second stadium was not measured, but the third ranged from 42 to 44 days for 3 overwintering specimens and the puparial phase ranged from 12 to 18 days for 3 specimens. Larvae are metapneustic in all instars. The posterior spiracles are re-tractile, aciculate, and contiguous, with the spiracular atria often fused. The larva forces its needle-like spiracles into the aerenchyma of water-willow roots from which it apparently procures oxygen. However, available evi-dence indicates that third instars, and perhaps earher instars, move about for long periods of time (up to 8 days in laboratory) between insertions of spiracles in the roots. Larvae of all instars ingested sapropel, or black ooze, which surrounded the roots of many water-willow plants. The high trans-parency of the larval integument greatly facilitated larval feeding observa-tions. The species overwintered in Ohio only as late second-or third-instar larvae between the clustered roots of water willow. All stages of the life cycle are described and illustrated. In North America the 69 genera and 377 species of Ephydridae presently recorded make them the largest drosophiloid family on the continent. How-ever, this large family of semiaquatic and aquatic acalyptrate flies has been so little studied biologically that the life histories of only relatvely few species have been described. Nearly all of the known larvae and puparia of Ephydridae are aquatic — living and feeding in algal mats, diatom-covered mud flats, wet sand shores, and black ooze, or sapropel (Brock et al, 1969; Dahl, 1959; Deonier, 1961, 1974; Deonier and Regensburg, 1978; Eastin and Foote, 1971; and others). The larvae of the notiphiline genus Hydrellia live and feed in the leaves and stems of aquatic macrophytes (Deonier, 1971) and those of various other genera scavenge on dead noninsectan animals (Bohart and Gressitt, 1951;
BioStor
