Dixidae

The Dixidae are a small family of aquatic nematoceran flies (Diptera) of less than 200 species. The larvae live in unpolluted, standing fresh waters, just beneath the surface film, usually amongst marginal aquatic vegetation. They are found in all continents except Antarctica.

Dixidae

John Curtis’s British Entomology 1824–1840 · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
meniscus midgePBDB
Sits inside
CulicoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 165 million years on record.

The record covers at least 192.9 Mya to 27.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 23.04 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 27 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 1 of 27 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 3 of 27 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 2 of 27 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 5 of 27 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 27 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 27 occurrencesEocene — about 14 of 27 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 27 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 27 occurrences205–199 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences199–193 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences174–168 Mya — about 2 occurrences168–162 Mya — about 1 occurrence156–149 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences149–143 Mya — about 1 occurrence143–137 Mya — about 3 occurrences137–131 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences131–125 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences125–118 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences118–112 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences57–50 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences50–44 Mya — about 2 occurrences44–38 Mya — about 2 occurrences38–32 Mya — about 9 occurrences32–26 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences26–19 Mya — about 1 occurrence192.9 Mya27.3 Mya205 Mya19 Mya

27 occurrences of Dixidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

27 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

11 formations

Kishenehn — 48.39°N, 113.70°WItat — 56.17°N, 93.17°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WNiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°EDurlston — 50.60°N, 1.95°WLulworth — 50.60°N, 1.95°WKarabastau — 42.90°N, 70.00°EKhaya — 62.16°N, 118.60°EDzhil — 42.70°N, 77.20°EFur — 56.95°N, 8.72°ESharteg — 44.14°N, 95.78°E

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The named rock units Dixidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Dixidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Dixidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,733 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Dixidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

12 references

Each of the 27 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Dixidae

Credit
John Curtis’s British Entomology 1824–1840
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Dixidae was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCulicoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Van der Wulp 1877