Family: Tipulidae
Subfamily: Tipulinae
Subgenus: Lunatipula
Length: typically 16-17 mm
The genus Tipula is so very large that specialists usually include the subgenus when they write the scientific name, thus this is Tipula (Lunatipula) fuliginosa. For its part, the subgenus Lunatipula is the largest of the subgenera in Tipula, with some 130 described species in North America.
Tipula (Lunatipula) fuliginosa is, like many other members of its subgenus, most often found in oak-hickory forest with rich humus on the forest floor.
Larvae are found in woodlands under layers of leaf litter (Gelhaus, 1986).
The range of this species extends from Kansas and Arkansas to Tennessee and North Carolina, and north to Ontario, Quebec, and New Hampshire. Adults are on the wing in West Virginia in May and June.
Dr. Chen Young, a Crane Fly specialist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, notes that the male and females of this species differ markedly. Females (shown) are darker than the males and their wings are darker too. The wings of males are largely hyaline.
Insects of West Virginia
