Two-winged insects of the Italian fauna in numbers

With ca. 160000 known species worldwide, Diptera are one of the most diverse groups of hexapods and arguably the most important in terms of impacts regarding both human and animal health given the large number of hematophagous species transmitting devastating diseases (e.g., mosquitoes, sandflies, midges, tse-tse flies), or parasites causing myasis (e.g. blow flies, bot flies). Moreover, dipteran damages caused to natural ecosystems such as crops and forests (mostly caused by nematocerans and acalyptrates) is nearly equally important. However, there are also myriads of beneficial species in this particular group of insects, contributing to fundamental ecosystem services such as plant pollination (e.g., flower flies, bee flies, as well as many calyptrates), population control of pests acting as predators and parasitoids (e.g., robber flies, bee flies, flower flies, tachinid flies), besides being an important component of freshwater and terrestrial trophic webs. The Italian fauna, with approximately 7000 dipteran species, is the most diverse in Europe In this talk we will give an overview of the Diptera diversity in Italy, analysed by family and genera using the Fauna Europaea project database.