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Dear dipterists,

Number of Dolichopodid taxonomic species has reached 7009 belonging to 257 genera.
See http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/porton/875/Genera3.htm

Does anybody remember top ten largest Diptera families?

Best wishes,
Igor.

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I've got "top 8"
Chironomidae - 15 000
Limoniidae - 10 000
Tachinidae - 8 000
Dolichopodidae - 7 000
Asilidae - 6 500
Cecydomyiidae - more 5 000
Ceratopogonidae - more 5 000
Syrphidae - more 5 000
Nikita

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Phoridae is champion!:)
B.Brown http://phorid.net/phoridae/phoridfaq.htm
"There are about 3,000 described species of phorids, but the actual number is much higher. Published estimates by Disney range from 20,000-50,000; my own work on New World phorids has shown that there is at least 10 times the described diversity out there (thus at least 30,000 species)."

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Thank you and you.
I proud with the Fourth place.
First. There is an estimation for Dolichopodidae - 13000 species (Dan Bickel).
Second. Any estimation should correspond with real dynamics of new species descriptions. This number for Dolichopodidae is 100-200 species per year.
What about the other top families?
Regards,
Igor.

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Dear all,
I have got today a message from Neal Evenhuis:
Here are the correct numbers per family as per the Biosystematic Database of World Diptera database (numbers as of 7 July 2006)
[www.diptera.org]

>>Limoniidae - 10013
>>Tachinidae - 8322
>>Asilidae - 7093
>>Dolichopodidae - 6839
>>Syrphidae - more than 5876
>>Chironomidae - 5805
>>Cecydomyiidae - 5805
>>Ceratopogonidae - 5455

Anyway, Dolichopodidae is on the fourth place. And they are very close to the third place with thier 7011 taxonomic species according with Dolibank:
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/porton/875/Genera3.htm

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HOW COULD IT BE??
I never saw Limoniidae flies?? :S
Neither the 3 last... but here I'm not sure.
Other all, i'VE seen lots of them. :)

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I think the main problem is we all have collecting bias. We have our favourite habitats and our favourite techniques. But (for example) how often does a person who likes tachinids decide to rear out flies from fungi from ancient woodland? ... not too often in my experience.

I think a lot of these groups that are very numerous but rarely studdied just inhabit habitats that are rarely visited and they are also quite 'insignificant' as adults and appear to look 'all the same', so people assume they haven't seen many species of them. A friend of mine specialises in Mycetophilidae so he likes to collect in damp woodland etc... and consequently he also comes up with tachinids that I rarely see because they parasitise fungi feeders. Meanwhile I am visiting places where I expect to see most tachinids - sunny, flower-rich places ... not the kind of place you'd find many mycetophilids or limoniids either :D

Like anything, if you decide to specialise in an unusual group and you look hard in the kind of places they like to inhabit then you'll find plenty :D