Paraphaenocladius Thienemann, 1924

Namayandeh, Armin, Hudson, Patrick L., Bogan, Daniel L. & Hudson, John P., 2024, Chironomidae (Diptera: Insecta) of Alaska, USA, with descriptions of new species and a checklist, Zootaxa 5511 (1), pp. 1-95 : 68

Paraphaenocladius Thienemann, 1924

There are three known species of Paraphaenocladius from Alaska. We collected three adult males of Paraphaenocladius brevinervis (Holmgren, 1869) , a new faunistic record for the USA, from a drift net in a Yukon River distributary near the mouth in June. We identified a larva of Paraphaenocladius exagitans exagitans (Johannsen, 1905) , a new faunistic record for Alaska, from Meadow Creek near Wasilla. We collected males of Paraphaenocladius impensus impensus (Walker, 1856) at Mount Roberts trail and the Yukon River delta in late June, and the Yukon Territory/ Alaska border, along Alaska Highway (Highway 2) and Peterson Creek north of Juneau in early to mid-August. Bowser et al. (2020) reported larvae of P. impensus from the Kenai Natuional Wildlife Refuge and Webb et al. (2022) from Rock Creek in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve with both identifications based on DNA barcodes. Unknown larvae have been reported from an experimental forest on Prince of Wales Island ( LeSage et al. 2005), and the Indian River in Sitka National Historical Park, and Upper Talarik Creek in Southwestern Alaska ( Arctos 2023).

Oliver & Dillon (1997) noted that the larvae of P. impensus inhabit damp and sphagnous soil, springs, and standing waters. Eiseman et al. (2023) reported the larvae of P. impensus in association with the liverwort Marchantia , possibly feeding in the leaf mines of other leaf-mining Chironomidae . Webb et al. (2022) found 15 public BINS containing more than 6000 larvae from 12 countries suggesting this species may be complex and the subspecies of Paraphaenocladius described in Saether & Wang (1995) need to be reevaluated and assigned to full species status.