Diptera

From EvoWiki

Diptera is the insect order of flies. The order's name literally literally translates as "two wings," in reference to the single pair of flying wings. Diptera is a diverse order of some 86,000 species distributed globally, and includes such hated insects as mosquitoes and the pestiferously omnipresent common house fly, Musca domestica and the bane of Californian agriculture, the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata. Dipterans have a huge range of ecological roles, from swift predators like robber flies, to rot-loving house flies, to danty nectar feeders like hover flies. Morphologically and ecologically diverse, Diptera are united by the shared presence of reduced hindwings, which have been modified into sensory structures called halteres. Numerous fly species, particularly the mosquito genera Anopheles and Aedes, are vectors (carriers) of diseases including the various forms of Leishmaniasis, malaria, river blindness and yellow fever. Malaria and yellow fever, in particular, are transmitted specifically by the aforementioned mosquito genera.

JGK