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Few groups of organisms are as diverse as flies. There are more
species of flies known today than all the vertebrates (fishes,
snakes, frogs, birds and mammals) together.
The Science of naming and classifying life began with Linnaeus in
the mid 18th century. The 10th edition of his system of nature has
been deemed to be the starting point for scientific names of
animals. For Diptera, Linnaeus knew and described 184 species of
flies, which he distributed among 10 genera. Today we know more
than 120,000 species of flies distributed among some 15,000 genera.
This exponentially growth is best illustrated graphically, such as
a plot of the number of species of flies known to occur in North
America (from Thompson 1989) by their discovery date. Experts
estimate we still know less than half the species of flies that
occur here.
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Content by F. Christian
Thompson
Please send questions and comments to Chris Thompson.
Last Updated: November
23, 2005 by Irina
Brake
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