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1) Does anybody have their finger on the known number of species of diptera in the world today, given that it is rising at some reasonably constant rate?

2) What about Europe?

3) Or even how many named families and genera???

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132 families of Diptera in Europe (Oosterbroek)

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over 130 families in Europe... And in the world maybe around 170 families - it depends... :)

THE NUMber of flies were discussed before. It is irrelevant to know the number of species...

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Thanks Crex, I will be happy with 132 in Europe although Fauna Europaea only knows 125 of them.

Dear Jorgemotelmeida,
Irrelevency is entirely relative, a facet of your mind set, as is relevency of course.

For many of the school children that visit my website, and particularly for the teachers that have to answer their questions, number of species is very relevent. Trying to explain to them at that age, and at that level of knowledge that a species is a figment of the human scientific imagination would only serve to turn them away, my website is aimed at trying to feed the natural scientist within, not help the computor games to kill it off. Without baits and hooks, or a net you will not catch many fish. And what we don't catch will surely be caught by somebody else.;)

Snow
By Gordon Ramel (25/02/03)
The wind carries it?s knives
hidden in the folded spaces
of a mathematician?s
9-dimensional dream.
Meticulously it uses them
to carve endlessly exquisite crystals
from the great ice realms of the sky;
beautiful and unique they inevitably fall.

Snow,
like the rest of the world,
is an illusion,
but this is irrelevant.

The important thing
is to cut the right wire
when defusing the time-bomb
of our socially inherited misperceptions
before the imploding mass
of our own ignorance
robs us forever
of any true sense
of its ethereal beauty.

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hello,

Lo?c Matile said there are about 100 000 fly species and about as much yet to be discovered.

As an order of magnitude, for your purpose, I think this should be correct.

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Gordon, also check out this thread - Top ten largest Diptera families.