New knowledge on the family Chironomidae (Diptera) from Far Northern Ontario, Canada, with a description of new species and new faunistic records

Abstract

The current study was developed as part of Far North Biodiversity Project of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, conducted from 2010 to 2014. Out of 2903, we assigned 2735 specimens to 66 species. The remaining 168 specimens were identified to 17 genera only (i.e., unassociated forms). One new species Bryophaenocladius beresfordi sp. n. is described. Chernovskiia orbicus (Townes, 1945), Derotanypus alaskensis (Malloch, 1919), Stempellinella edwardsi Spies and Saether, 2004, Stictochironomus marmoreus (Townes, 1945), and Tanaytarsus occultus Brundin, 1949 are reported for the first time from Ontario, Canada. We also redescribe the adult male of the Holarctic species Bryophaenocladius flavoscutellatus (Malloch, 1915).

LSID: http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:5F627C2CB497-4A1A-A4A6-6061BA

Keywords:

• Far Northern Ontario
• Chironomidae
• Diptera
• new species
• faunistic records
• Nearctic

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the help and co-operation we received from many dedicated researchers, university staff, field and laboratory technicians and express our sincere thanks to all of these, without whom this work would not have been possible: Dr Joel Moubayed-Breil and Dr Peter Langton for help on examination of specimens from Europe, Dr Martin Spies of Zoologische Staatssammlung Munich (ZSM), Germany and Dr Evgenyi Makarchenko of Federal Scientific Centre of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity, Russia for providing references; Debbie Lietz of Trent University Imaging Centre for facilitating the microscopy for this study; Dr Doug Currie and Mr Brad Hubley of Royal Ontario Museum for housing the type and voucher specimens. We also thank the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and for logistical support and funding, specifically Ken Abraham, Glenn Brown, Rod Brook, Dave Etheridge, Derek Goertz, Dean Phoenix, Kim Bennett, Lynn Landriault, Sarah Langer, John Ringrose (Baffin Regional Wildlife Biologist, Government of Nunavut, Nunavut, Canada), and the many field collectors. Our sincere thanks also to two anonymous reviewers who have greatly improved this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).