Language: Bilingual in English and German
Flies and Midges: A Family Album contains a compilation of photographs showing representatives of 92 families of two-winged insects. Of these, the first 22 belong to the craneflies and midges ("Nematocera", pages 8-51), whilst the remaining families are the "true flies" ("Brachycera"). The names of the families and their systematic order are based on Systema Dipterorum (Pape & Evenhuis 2013). The information on each facing page gives an English and German vernacular name and the scientific name as well as a brief scientific characterisation for each family. In some cases two or more families share the same vernacular name. "N. N." indicates that there is no vernacular name. The brief texts can give only a general impression of the life histories and preferred habitats. In many families we find a huge diversity of lifestyles, and to nearly every pattern there are also numerous exceptions. It would be impossible to cover all of these within the present format. The information on species numbers in Europe is taken from the Fauna Europaea data base (de Jong 2013).