Apteropanorpidae is a family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 of wingless scorpionflies

Mecoptera

Mecoptera are an order of insects with about 550 species in nine families worldwide. Mecoptera are sometimes called scorpionflies after their largest family, Panorpidae, in which the males have enlarged genitals that look similar to the stinger of a scorpion...

 containing a single genus Apteropanorpa with four named species. These species, also called Tasmanian snow scorpionflies are found in moss in Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

 and southern Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. The adults are generalised predators. The larvae live in moss and are locally common.

Apteropanorpa is probably an austral ecological counterpart of the Northern Hemisphere

Northern Hemisphere

The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...

 Boreidae, adapting to colder climates by losing its wings and feeding on the abundant understory mosses. Both groups have been collected on snow and at high elevations. However, these two groups are probably not sister groups, as males of Apteropanorpa have developed the bulbous, recurved abdomen found in advanced families, such as Panorpidae.

The best-known species, Apteropanorpa tasmanica, is known to carry two species of parasitic mites ( & , 2011).

Etymology

The genus name is derived from Panorpidae, a related family, and Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 apteros "wingless".

See also

• Snow scorpionfly
  Snow scorpionfly
  Boreidae, commonly called Snow scorpionflies, are a very small family of Scorpionflies, containing only around 30 species, all of which are boreal or high-altitude species in the Northern Hemisphere...
  
  (Boreidae), another family of scorpionflies with reduced or no wings