Meropeidae

Somma, Louis A. & Dunford, James C., 2008, Preliminary Checklist of the Mecoptera of Florida: Earwigflies, Hangingflies, and Scorpionflies, Insecta Mundi 2008 (42), pp. 1-9 : 2

Meropeidae - Earwigflies

The North American earwigfly, Merope tuber Newman , was recently (1996) collected in the Florida panhandle, representing first records for the state and southernmost records for North America ( Dunford et al. 2007a). All 40 of these specimens, from Leon and Liberty counties, are currently housed in FSCA ( Table 1; Dunford et al. 2007a, [in preparation]). This secretive meropeid is indigenous to eastern deciduous forests of North America. Its only other extant confamiliar is Austromerope poultoni Killington , an earwigfly restricted to extreme southwestern Western Australia ( Byers 1973a; Abbott et al. 2007; Dunford et al. 2007a, [in press]; Somma and Dunford 2007).